There’s no interesting content here, just an outline of random shower thoughts I’ve accumulated for the past year. One of those self-monologue posts I do once in a while just cause. I’m not yet back into content creator mode given the amount of work I have to cover even during the holidays.
As much as I want to do more Hive stuff, the other life matters more. There’s not a single day in this Holiday Season that I stopped reporting to the office just to do my job being in Health Care Services. Not sorry for the 3k words here.
If I mentioned you in the post, use “CTRL + F” to search your name and skip the rambling.
At the time of this writing, I’m planning to continue my work at home. That’s why I bought a microscope to be an effective wage slave with a smile. There’s only one person I expect to read the post some months to years from now, that would be me. I do read my year ender posts as throwbacks on what the hell was I thinking back then. To have a reference point from where I’m at right now. Not a popular way to use Hive but whatever I post here has throwback value for some time to reflect.
Those resolutions made, failed and accomplished get reevaluated to do better in the next year. There’s a lot of cover and I did want to make separate posts about each prompt but compiling it into one post to bore people of my ramblings also works. An inspiration for this post format came from AI prompts and laziness to actually make the blog pretty.
Hive:
It’s still the blockchain where I can shitpost and pretend I’m a content creator. It’s also a place where I connect with people across the globe that happens to use Hive. After stepping outside the blockchain to be busy with other stuff unrelated to blogging, posting again is something I still look forward to without the monetary digits attached. This place has a lot of happenings on subcommunities and interesting characters if you know where to look around.
One of the tasks for next year is to add more activities promoting the place without stressing myself about it. Like how I just share my artsy stuff here and mentioning I use Hive on Twitter and Instagram.
Trading:
I started doing some day trading while multitasking with work. The results look something like win 150$ dollars in a trade, lose 35, lose 1.55, win 65, lose 2.5, win 14, win 11, lose 49 and leaving the year end results approximately 760$ using a starting capital of 580$ way back in July of this year.
It’s a mix of doing it via internal market and trading at Binance. The loaned amount wasn’t necessary but I like to add some challenge to compel to me perform. Even with a 30% gain, I’m now convinced looking at the hourly charts too much isn’t worth the time.
Losing 1.55 – 3 $ was the product of waiting for several hours for a thing to happen and only to fail. But I wasn’t focused on the profits, I was building a system for myself to trade effectively so the losses just felt like small tuition. The next year, I’ll be focusing on longer time frames like 4 hours to weeks.
Investing:
Each time I am convinced of going into a bank just to add more positions to the local stock market, there’s a gloom and doom news about rising interest rates, recessions, and economic instability. Lately it’s been mostly about watching the US stock market seeing how it affects tech stocks and crypto. I learned a lot about the macroeconomic aspects to trading/investing. I probably spent more time learning financial stuff than art stuff contrary to the resolution I set out at the start of 2022.
The pursuit of financial freedom means a lot of sacrifices. I’m motivated by what I see from the events around me, how pension funds fail people who are supposed to retire comfortably, how debt can cripple one’s social mobility, and being deprived of one’s basic rights due to financial struggles. I think this is a department I want to pursue building my financial smarts so that I can disseminate what I know to those that also want to better themselves financially.
Raising the Quality of Life:
I met a friend again after they came back from working from abroad. Lives in a faraway paradise where access to health care and education is a challenge. The guy was building projects on one of the islands he’s living in by transporting goods only available within the city to the island.
The amount of social network the guy had was impressive and I only knew him as the charismatic lead in class but never thought about his capacity for business. Anyway, we had a long catching up and he mentioned about how people easily get sick due to poor access to potable water, poor health care practices because facilities are far from the island, and indigenous groups.
I’m already sold in the idea of helping the guy build that island up. The future plans include investing further on their own island resort (they own an island) and it’s a good investment considering the place was like Boracay before tourism boomed. Have some convenience stores, health clinic, and more amenities for the locals to have access too.
We’re still on the planning stages and building some capital but overall, everything is going to well. I’m looking forward to brag about the project once there’s some substantial progress and then invite Hivers here to visit the place during their vacation. Let’s just leave that to a future possibility.
Purpose:
In reference to the previous prompt, I’m glad I met up with the old friend in a time when I was questioning what direction to take with my life. I’m at a place where I can live comfortable if I was living for myself but that’s not how Asian Cultures work with filial piety in tow. I still have to mind some folks and their welfare which can mess up my financial resources. On top of the present problems, everything just felt like I was living in a state of mediocrity given how things are turning my way.
There is something unsettling when things go generally well and I’m always trying to figure out what areas I’m blind. If things are going well, it’s either brought by ignorance or they actually are just going well. At the root, I still have a lingering existential dread to appease and I want more stuff to preoccupy me from the void that haunts when nothing else is going. I could live myself and be contented focusing on myself and significant others but I could not close my eyes to the broader horizon I’ve seen.
I’m not out to save the world but pursuit of actions that uplift the quality of life for the people around you isn’t a bad way to kill time before yours is up. I can’t expect people to be giving, kind, or act in accordance to what is noble for the benefit of others if I don’t personally do my own share and not be hypocritical about it.
Working in health care services, I can see how much financial struggles can prevent one get access to health care which is supposed to be a right and yet it is so expensive to have. Access to education where people can have the devices to better their life situation.
These are meta goals that I only thought about as soon as I am living comfortably (I still have a lot of debt to pay made by someone else but that’s a can of worms for another time). Leave people’s lives better than when you found them is the goal.
A Humbling Experience:
I think this is an aspect that I didn’t have a lot of problems for years so I’m going to keep maintaining the momentum of not being too concerned about being right despite how tempting it is. No matter how much I have achieved on paper, the achievements just didn’t rub on when they’re supposed to. Contrary, it feels like empty victories seeing one’s name on the top performers at the national level. There’s a lesson I learned in the past that stuck with me to this day, no one is special and I should meditate on this. It’s a love and hate relationship to pursue change. Either I fully commit to changing or half ass the effort which is a waste of time.
A senior instructor once remarked “Don’t you find it disturbing that you’re comfortable with failing or being wrong? I don’t know but if you’re not bothered with being wrong maybe there’s something you need to work on?” this was during a feedback when I received a failing mark on some tests and I was chill about it. Years back, being right and scoring higher mattered more. The competitive spirit came into toxic levels that I realize the need for change when I was at the top but it only brought me anxiety to maintain the position and never felt like I was accomplishing what I wanted. After reading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and it’s all small stuff, some lessons just stuck with me long enough to make my anxieties go away.
A lot of the things we preoccupy ourselves are collections acquired during our walk to life and convinced ourselves that these matter, they maybe do matter but the value and returns they bring aren’t up to par with what value we give them attention to.
Attention being a zero sum game, that Netflix subscription or time spent playing mobile gacha games can be hidden vices that you convinced yourself matter but these don’t really generate enough value to you compared to picking up a productive hobby where you can potentially acquire a skillset you can market yourself with. Compared to picking up a book that polishes your grammar (I need this) or drawing, playing a games seems like a less productive option for me anyway.
When I took a licensure exam, I spent 60% of my time playing games and crammed at the last minute only to end up 1 solid point away from the top positions. The same thing happened again with my nationals exam where that 1 point mattered and I only spent a week cramming instead of utilizing an entire year to be ready. Did I regret the outcome? Nah, I expected to fail but shit, I didn’t expect to be on the top list for being lazy, doesn’t sound humbling right?
Actually, that event served only as a buffer for my other gross failures, I failed my overall performance for the year due to low scores on several areas and it really made my instructors question my commitment to the program, how is it that I can produce those national results and yet fail on several fronts? The data shown were at the extremes.
I just said I got lucky and they just took it as just that. Though what I really wanted to say was being unmotivated to work and being severely distracted with learning other stuff like finance and crypto. The long winded takeaway here is affirming that if I wanted to compete, I can prop myself to suit their liking but right now I’m distracted with several other stuff to mind how I look.
Job:
In reference to the above prompt, at this point, if I was told to resign, I’d probably take the deal and leave without a fuss. Why would I leave such a well-paying job and risk venturing into trading stocks/crypto or do freelance art things? Because I’ve built up some skillsets outside my expertise that losing a job isn’t the worse possible outcome.
In accordance with the philosophy of Flow, be like the water, it can take in many forms. I equate the lesson as being a jack of trades master of none. I don’t want to live my life being chained to a dopamine kick whenever the notification of monthly salaries come up, it’s better to be a master of your own happiness, whatever that means.
This job, while useful for the people and brings me closer to my ikigai, is also a soul draining job that dampens my creativity and motivates me to drag my feet to work.
Community:
Probably one of the bets twists I had for the year is seeing HivePH transform into the way it is now. I never had high expectations when it comes to making plans with people so when a group is onboard with the plan and pushes through, that’s already something for me. My efforts to better HivePH is tied to a higher objective which is to leave the community better than when I found it.
Though I still wish someone else takes on the lead role so I can mind other important things too, hopefully 2023 steps up on the task.
I want HivePH to be an instrument to better the lives of the people also building it. It’s a vague want but tangible goals are setup around to make it happen. I don’t know the future of crypto but if it’s going to stay, those who are learning about it early are at a better position than those who aren’t.
I want to focus on systems where everyone who gives their effort is compensated while spreading the resources to everyone else who isn’t in the community with the least amount of effort in return for the higher amount of value.
The best asset the community has isn’t what is found on the account’s wallet but it lies on the people making up the community. The expected end of 2022 was seeing the server lifeless like how the previous years but this year, members like:
You know this was only setup to increase the post’s view count but let’s just play along and pretend you like me enough to visit the post. When I expected HivePH to be less by the end of 2022, kayo yung plotwist ko 2022. I'm looking forward to working with these people for 2023.
Antiabuse:
This is one of the activities on Hive I dramatically got less active on. The hunt for plagiarism and spam entails being prepared for drama. I would’ve keep going at it if I had more Hive time but the trouble isn’t worth doing so setting up a trail for downvotes on people I trust was the best compromise I could think of.
I still think decentralized negative curation is necessary and having no compensation for doing it makes it matter even more because there’s no monetary incentive to do the right thing which makes the act noble by itself.
The amount of shitty people that will take credit for work they didn’t do, play ignorant, and blatantly contribute mess on the blockchain is a weekly monster event but most can’t be bothered to clean up after them. So for curators that actually take the time to bother, you da real mvp.
NFT Games:
It’s been a battle between viewing the game as an investment versus enjoying the game as it is. I think I’m somewhere in the middle of the viewpoints and glad I didn’t give into the hype of putting a lot of money on projects that haven’t delivered anything on the table yet.
Cryptoinfluencers:
Just like any influencers, the more they sell the token and hype created, the more I’m like to be contrarian with the token. There’s a conflict of interest when it comes to listening to these salespeople. They get paid to endorse and it doesn’t matter whether they actually believe in the project. Investing is a you’re on your own business, predominantly anyway. The market may reward you with profits but those profits are almost equal to someone else’s loss you’re celebrating.
Adulting:
The mark of maturity I set is determining whether someone is able to do delayed gratification for a noble objective. I graduated in college only to figure out I have to be an adult equipped with academic subjects 9/10 I haven’t applied in my work for a paper that proves I’m competent to be a functioning member of society.
I recall wondering how to grownups figured out what to do with their lives and maybe with age comes with wisdom, there is some truth to it but half way meant figuring out on your own and realizing you’re fucked at the head start.
This year, this concept probably weighed more on me that any other subject because this is the current life challenge to my age. Am I doing things right? Or am I just doing it right because I learned it from a role model which I may not be sure to have followed right? There’s plenty of questions to keep me awake when attempting to sleep.
Labels:
You can think of your bills as an expense or you can frame your expenses as a means to generate asset. It's all in the mindset and it's within your control, some of them, to classify them as such. Say you pay your internet bills 100, but your job generates you 250, 100 is like the fee/investment/toll to open up to the 150 opportunity. But if you don't work or fill up a quota to generate 250, then you fail to generate a profit and you also lose 100.
This is a psychological hack, it's perception that makes or break your life. If you see the expenses as a means to drain your resources, these expenses are also a means to provide you profits.
Weakness:
A small self-review made me realize the bad habits I acquired like doing the stuff that make me weak. The lack of discipline and assertiveness in how I conduct myself. I think this was a consequence of loosening the inner competitive spirit I tried to chill.
Conflict:
Confrontation is one department I’d good at but it’s not just blatantly walking up to pick a fight. Everything has to be systematically laid out prior to the climactic confrontation in order to make room for quick resolution. I think this is one aspect most people fail at because conflict aversion also means not having any skill set built to diffuse or resolve the conflict. Probably a cultural thing to be passive aggressive but if there is a way to cut the problem from its roots, I’d pursue that and if the roots are hard, burning the tree also works as a compromise. More drama to learn from next year hopefully.
Romance:
I didn’t think I’d include this part but after a conversation last night about the subject, this topic has been a recurring theme for months when I get shipped to different doctors and why I’m still single. I’m happy folks aren’t asking for grandkids. It’s not a top priority right now and I find current self in a state where I’m just not the best person I think my ideal would want to have.
It doesn’t feel good to reject because I know how it feels to be at the receiving end but it would even hurt more if the other got too invested. If ever she is out there, I hope that I’ll be someone worthy of her praise by then. I also hope that if they met me online, they wouldn’t have a high bar for physical attractiveness. I maybe anon but I never propped myself up as good looking. Below average or average at best ._.
Wallet Transactions:
Got to mention this disclaimer at some point, I’m surprised no one else probed about my accounts tx. I buy my Hive/HBD via peer to peer, trade with it, lend or loan it just like a normal people do. Now I know curators may find some sus on the wallet tx if one name happens to be associated with shady business in the future but just letting people know I called it early that this is what I’ve been doing.
Some specific resolutions can be derived from the post which I intend to come back ready at the start of 2023. This is just a post to have a baseline reference for my future self, equivalent to a time capsule on the blockchain.
Now we're at the bottom of the post .
If you made it this far reading, I’m surprised you actually read it (speaking to people other than the author). For the future me that will revisit this post again, I hope you find yourself in a better place than when you left 2022.