I recently finished Yakuza 5. It’s all about dreams. Working towards your dreams. How your dreams inspire others.

At this point in time… I think I’m almost.. at a crossroad. I’m approaching my quarter-life / midlife crisis lol. I think… I’m like Archer/Faker. All my ideals and goals and dreams… were given to me by others. I don’t even know what I want. I guess… it kinda boils down to free will vs determinism. At this point… I actually don’t believe in free will. If you look at how a crazy person acts. It’s because of their genetics and how they were raised. He’s acts that way because he’s crazy. But… in a way aren’t we all crazy? We all act in the way we do because of our genetics and upbringing. At least… that’s my thought.

I have the next… 3 years all planned out I guess. And I’m chasing my dreams. It’s funny… because when you look back even 2 years ago. I think 2 years ago me… dreamed of what I have now. And… I have what I dreamed of from 2 years ago. Then again… I think it’s the survivorship bias or whatever. If I didn’t succeed in my dreams from 2 years ago… my life would probably be radically different and I’d be homeless or something. /shrug.

It’s funny because… I look around… and I wonder. What are everyone else’s dreams? I mean… I live in Silicon Valley. It’s the land of optimism and dreams. People come here to work hard to achieve. And yet… whenever I go back to Toronto. Or even the regular restarants. I see the same people doing the same thing. I think at some point… people just give up on their dreams. They accept that they can’t do it… or that it’s to hard. They choose comfort and certainty over risk and the unknown.

It’s funny because I act this way too. Rationally… I know that certain action have unlimited upside but limited downside. It’s what been introduced to me in the book the black swan. That’s not the same as buying a lottery ticket… the expected value of a lottery ticket is hella crappy. But the expected value of say… starting a contracting firm or whatever is much better. But it’s… always so scary.

At any given point in time… to grow and get better you’ll have to do something that you’ve never done before. It’s all about that growth mindset. I think… I’ve been challenging myself I guess… as practice for the big leap into the unknown that I have planned eventually. I did a performance workshop just to… challenge myself. At work I volunteer for increasingly difficult tasks. Man… my deploys are getting farther and farther apart cause my work is getting big and crazy. It’s scary…I mean… I definitely wouldn’t have been able to predict my accomplishments… from even a year back.

I’ve just been focusing on growth. I guess… like true Silicon Valley speak. It’s all about them growth numbers. I’ve stagnated in the physical aspect… in a way. Even though I’m currently at a personal best for deadlift. All my other lifts are sub personal best.

Hmmmm. So what is my dream? Shiet… I actually don’t have a real dream. Well… I wanna be a billionaire. So freaking bad. Buy all of the things I never had. But looking around my room. I already purchased everything that I want. Short of owning real estate and a car… all the toys that I’ve ever wanted… exist in my small studio apartment. I’m writing this post listening to my Sennheiser HD 650s. It cost me $400. I got it for myself as a ‘christmas present’. But in all honesty, I could’ve just got it for no reason.

I’ve been thinking about getting a new laptop. But my laptop from the Sandy Bridge era is still fully functional. Man… it feels like I travelled to the future. I still remember doing research for my laptop purchase. I bought my laptop as soon as Sandy Bridge came out. Sandy bridge was released in 2011. That’s exactly 4 years ago I guess. Wow. 4 years.

I’ve actually been researching laptops again. I was tempted to get a… skylake laptop. But then now I’m waiting for Kaby Lake for next summer. Because… it’s always better to wait unless you need it now. /shrug. I think… I’m gonna have to write a future me email for 6 months and a year from now again. The last time…. I was feeling like this… it meant that I wanted myself to kick myself to take action.

I think… I want to be rich. And everything… but to quote motivational videos. I only ‘kinda’ want it. I don’t want it more than I want to party. I don’t want it more than I want to sleep. I think… shit. While I’ve been pushing myself in some areas… I think I’m entering the comfort zone again. Which is bad. It’s horrible. Last time I wrote myself an email from futureme.org. I just read it. Wow. I guess… the only person who can comfort and calm me down is myself now. Words from other people don’t carry weight… since I don’t trust / believe in their competence. I guess it’s good that I have such belief in myself that only I could be trusted. It reminds me of… Artemis Fowl. And how he could only convince himself by recording a video of himself.

It’s almost christmas and new years. It’ll be a time for me to do an annual retrospective and plan out some yearly process updates and dreams. I… almost don’t know what to dream for anymore. I guess… I gotta go back to first principles and the socratic method. And just… find serenity through chaos.

tl;dr - I’ve achieved my dreams of the past… and I’m not sure what my dreams of the future are