In the quiet moments between the noise in my life, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on who I’ve been, where I am, and where I want to go. The past six months have been especially quiet. Spending so much quiet time alone, I’ve had some time to listen to my thoughts. These thoughts sometimes pile up and without any sort of outlet, ruminate in my mind without anything to do.

I can sometimes become overwhelmed, and I feel like Sylvia Plath writing about the fig tree. In an effort to bring some sort of clarity to my life, I decided to build a sort of blueprint for the next five years. I want to write about quiet reflection, a process for envisioning a future, and daily practices of taking steps towards my future.

I also want to note that this might change, and I might make edits to it. For every edit, you can see the original version, and the edited version. If there's no such thing, then I haven't made edits.

Preface

I’m keeping this blog to myself, using it as a way to journal my thoughts and reflect each week. I don’t think my intention is to create anything for other people to read, although sometimes I feel like I’m lying to myself saying that.

I believe that part of why I’m doing this is to have a history of my thought process and track my growth. On the other hand, I am sort of writing with the quiet hope that someone is reading. I kind of find peace in the idea that I myself am not alone with my thoughts.

That said, I also want to improve writing in efforts to one day make a film movie on Super 8, once I'm rich of course.

5 year vision

Lifestyle

In 5 years, I envision myself living somewhere near the mountains, close to some of the national parks. While I want to explore the world, I want to explore the National Parks first. Regardless I don’t envision myself staying in Florida.

Some places that come to mind are Seattle, Chicago, Denver, or even Portland. I see myself somewhere that is lively, and where I can build a strong community with friends. Somewhere that is full of things to do, and has great food (the food is important). These places seem to tick all the boxes when it comes to a place that I see myself living.

In support of living in one of these places, I also see myself with a van like a Vanagon Syncro, or a Toyota Land Cruiser. Whichever it is, I want it to be a boxy looking car, so definitely an older one.

I also like the idea of a cheap Honda CR-V that's in decent condition. These Hondas are SUPER reliable, extremely affordable, and can last a really long time. Without making this part a section about only cars, I also like only Toyota Tacoma's, and the old AE-1. But I think I would find it more practical to travel in an SUV or van.

This blog is gonna start looking like a Pinterest page.

My goal is to take frequent road trips, using the vehicle to explore National Parks as a kind of personal retreat. Sometimes, I’d love to bring along close friends, and make it a regular opportunity for bonding and connection. I see myself taking film pictures of all my trips, of people I meet, and things I find beautiful.

Eventually, I see myself mountaineering on snowy peaks. Mountaineering costs a lot of money, so I'd have to be in a well off position by that time in my life. But regardless of that, I definitely see mountains in my future.

I also want to include traveling to other places in the world in this section, but seeing as how it's a more expensive endeavor, it'd be something that happens on a yearly or even bi-yearly basis.

Day to day

My day to day life includes a steady pursuit of things in 3 main topics; intellectual, spiritual, and physical.

Intellectually, this includes reading difficult literature and understanding Computer Engineering on a deeper level, which includes physics. Mostly, I try to keep a discipline of deep undistracted focus on intellectually stimulating topics.

Spiritually, I see myself meditating frequently and understanding myself better in order to become a man I'm proud of. Understanding how to regulate my emotions, how to keep steady relationships, and how to flourish as a man in society, and be supportive to those around me.

Physically, this includes a pursuit that challenges me mentally and helps keep me healthy. I want to be able to keep supporting MMA, but I know down the line my body will take a toll. If I am in a good place, I could see myself regularly rock climbing in the parks, and just lifting and running to keep myself healthy.

I also want to be constantly learning about new things, so I want to try and discover new things to work on. For example, if I find something that interests me, I want to try it. Especially if something is outside my comfort zone. I believe discovering things like this is something that comes natural, like meeting someone with a niche interest, or seeing something that catches your eye.

Importantly, I want to be able to sustain a relatively happy life, so I don't want to push myself into a 'grind' mindset. I plan to enjoy life on a day to day basis, so have at least two days where all I do is enjoy the nuances of life.

If I'm with a significant other, I want to be able to make her feel cherished and loved. I want to slowly but surely build a life around her and sutain a healthy relationship. Otherwise, I want to still remain happy, so I want to socialize, connect, go out, and do things that make me feel good.

Work

Work is something that at this point I have gained some decent autonomy in. I have leveraged skills that I've developed and with this gained a remote job. I am able to get my work done early and have most of the day free for my own endeavors. I've become relatively good enough where I can get my work done with ease, and not stress about the nuances.

In my work, I’m paid well enough to sustain a good quality of life, where I can eat well, enjoy the privilege of financial stability, and have money to spare.

Eventually, at this time in my life, I'm either starting, working on, or looking into startups that I can build using my skills as a Computer Engineer.

Yearly Goals

As for my yearly goals, I want to focus on the upcoming year. With the new year just around the corner, it feels like the perfect opportunity to set intentions and measure progress. By the end of the year, it will almost be time for a fresh start again, giving me a checkpoint to reflect on how far I've come.

While I don't want to dive into details, since that's what monthly planning is for, my main goal here is to identify clear and effective pathways that align with my vision.

Lifestyle & work

In terms of my lifestye, speaking broadly, money plays a factor in it. So, I want to pair lifestyle and work together. If we break it down further, skills are needed to generate money for this. So, to support the lifestyle I want, I have to be able to develop strong skills in the field I want to be proficient in. I also need to finish my degree, and have experience by the time I get there.

The skills needed for Data Engineering are typically SQL, Python, Cloud, and knowledge in Databases. For experience, my internship should land me a job right out of college. As for completing my degree, I plan to take advantage of my extra time by enrolling in four classes per semester. So, for lifestyle goals, it can be summed up with these two goals:

• Expedite classes
• Supplemental studying of SQL, Python, Cloud, and Databases

Day to day

For my day to day goals, I want to be able to instill discipline in my life, and for this, I want to be able to follow 3 core daily habits to support intellectual, spiritual, and physical. The daily habits don't have to be insanely hard and time consuming, only tractable and simple yet not too simple.

I also want to be able to practice living a sustainable life. To live a happy life, I don't have to wait for my ideal lifestyle to materialize and instead I can practice it each day.

So, my day to day goals are as follows:

• Build discipline by following 3 core daily habits
• Practice daily happiness and enjoy life around me

Monthly and weekly goals

Similarly to my yearly goals, I believe that the monthly goals might be variable, and so I'll be broad about it and focus for the upcoming month. For the idea of monthly goals, I want to use my 100 gardeners analogy. So, I'll set up four gardens:

• School
• Supplemental Studying
• 3 Core Habits
• Community

School / Supplemental Studying

Since expediting school is a focus in my yearly goal, I want to put as many gardeners as I can into it. I want to be able to put at least 50 gardeners. During downtime (in between semesters), I can move gardeners into supplemental studying, and even lower the amount of gardeners and move some into my core habits.

Core Habits

For my core habits, they won't be changing much. But I want to focus specifically on one of my core habits which I'll get into when I go to my daily goals section. In this case, I'll add a little over the minimum amount of gardeners. 30 gardeners seems right.

Community

As for community, I used this name to symbolize well-being and happiness. While I sometimes romanticize staying at home and being too busy to go out, I know that’s not ideal. I want to learn to enjoy my own company, but I also recognize the importance of connecting with others for my well-being. In that case, it's important to put at least 20 gardeners into community.

methods and daily goals

Finally, I'll introduce methods to get myself closer to my yearly goal. For each "garden" I'll go into more depth and figure out how I'm going to approach each.

First, I believe that it's important to lay foundation for daily life. My approach is using a Google calendar and a todo list using Doom Emacs Org-Mod to organize things that are constantly repeating, and things that are upcoming in my life.

If I'm away from a computer, I'll write a todo item on a piece of paper in my wallet. In the morning, during a "todo ritual", I delete all the things I got done the day before, and transfer any new ones into Doom Emacs. Throughout the day, outside of the blocks that are already taken up on my Google calendar (which is an older version of my Google Calendar), I have todo blocks that are focused on getting todo things done.

This takes a massive load off trying to figure out all the things I need to do in a day.

School / Supplemental Studying

Since I am expediting school, I want to be able to have a structured approach to it that I'll probably write in another blog. A short version however, is focused on deep work.

Every morning, I want to be concentrated for at least 2 hours on deep work. Deep work meaning concentrated, intentional, focused, undistracted work. This can be a class, or supplemental studying. More time can obviously be added, but 2 hours is the daily minimum spent concentrating on deep work.

As for studying tactics on tackling 4 classes a semester (along with a fulltime internship), I plan on reading "How to Become a Straight A Student" and updating this here blog.

Core Habits

For my core habits, I want to touch on something intellectual, something spiritual, and something physical each day. I don’t intend to go all out on each of these, but if time permits, I can dedicate extra effort to one area at a time. It’s better to think of these daily habits as a form of maintenance that can be given more focus when needed.

The three habits I've stuck with are reading (intellectual), meditation (spiritual), and lifting / training MMA (physical). These habits will be tracked with my wallet, which serves as a notebook. Each day will be marked with an X if completed, or unmarked if not completed.

Community

And for community, I want to be able to have at least one effort a week where I try and either go out, or connect with friends. Typically this will be on one of my days off.

For example, since I like to cook, I made Tonkotsu Ramen from scratch along with Chashu the other day (other day being like a month or two ago), and I invited two of my friends over. I made ramen solely for the reason of inviting friends over. This would count as completing my goal for the week.

Another example would simply be taking myself on a date. Watching a movie wouldn't necessarily be enough, but watching a movie, going out for dinner, and walking on the beach at night could count as completing my goal for a week.

Furthermore, to get experimental in this mf, I'll try and complete a roll of film each month. Maybe finish my photo album section of my website

Conclusion

Although not a completely finished version, this ends the outline that I came up with for a lifestyle centric plan of mine. It's messy since I made it in a week, but with some further editing, it should be polished enough to read back and comprehend.

Now, for a corny quote:

"Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against other kind of confusion. People who labor all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time - even when hard at work"