I’ve been doing plenty of writing on different platforms over the past couple of days.

Honestly, when I say a lot of writing, I mean a lot of writing.

I’ve written on LowYat, Reddit, Medium, everywhere. At the pace I’m going, I guess I seem like an Energizer bunny at times, but also possibly seeming like I’m crazy because the way that I write is that I talk to Siri and get Siri to transcribe every single thing that I say.

Anyway, that seems to be the reason that a lot of people are coming in from different places here and there – Welcome one, welcome all! So glad that you decided to be here!

Noun I think normally marketing should be a boring thing, but for me it’s actually been quite entertaining, and still with seemingly fit for moments that I am sure I don’t appreciate the full scope of just yet.

Probably the most random one of these instances was the way that I met Pang Sern, the admin of ChatGPT Malaysia, a new Facebook group that I started posting in over the past day and in which people have started to ask me to repost my writings from this blog (o.o)

I have been going on that self-promotion grind, shameless author as I am, and found myself at a Star article about ChatGPT featuring some guy who has nothing to do with ChatGPT but whose face was somehow plastered on the article…

… To which Andrew Boey rejoins with the following epic comment:

To which, appreciating Andrew Boey’s epic comment, I rejoin with shameless self promotion ala here, only to realize that Pang also writes on Medium.

…Which then leads to even more shameless self promotion…

…Which then leads us here:

Well, what can I say? Thank you for responding to my shameless self-promotion (and to the moments where I wasn’t self-promoting either… Were there any?!)… and I hope that it wasn’t just self-promotion with no benefits to you, the reader, because that would cause the entire house of cards to come falling down!

But now, some self – evaluation!

On my part, I do know on an intuitive level why it is that self-promotion generally isn’t appreciated – it’s one of those things that interrupts the flow of community in the name of furthering a specific person’s aim, an attempt to distinguish oneself from a crowd for whatever reason – it is natural for people to look at that with scorn: Who is this person, and why are they creating a ruckus?

Sorry if you found it annoying and rest assured I understand why; on my part though, it was one of those things that I had to do no matter what because I know that I have something valuable to share and that there is a mission that I am on – for which I must do my thing.

I just happened to be lucky enough that people have responded kindly so far and seem to enjoy my work, so I’ll look forward to creating more of it!

I’m thrilled that you’re here and that you enjoyed my writing (or perhaps you hate it and wish to strangle me? I’ll never know if you don’t comment!), and I’ll look forward to creating much more for you in the days to come 🙂

Till our next chat! (Literally this entire piece was narrated out to Siri while I was sitting in my chair, LOL)

– V

Long day today for many reasons, but a fulfilling one altogether. I spent some time writing a Medium article about my feelings about clickbait, had Starbucks like a good proper hipster working in a cafe for a couple minutes as my mom was happily raving about NSK.

As I’m moving forward with the process of marketing my book, I guess that I’m starting to realize that there isn’t a lot of knowledge about artificial intelligence in Malaysia at the moment, and I think that I can play an important role in sharing more about that in days to come.

I’m not 100% sure how I’ll be developing that platform just yet, but I know for sure that this isn’t something that a lot of people know too much about, so if I can, I’d like to be able to share my knowledge in ways that can help people around me by taking the first steps forward on a journey where the steps aren’t always clear for me.

I guess a big part of it is sharing information and knowledge?

Well, everything has to start somewhere and frankly a small part of me has doubts about what I’m going to share in the first place and how it’s going to be received, but I know I have to be brave 🙂

If you’re interested in AI and you happen to be from Malaysia, consider joining Artificial Intelligence Malaysia 🙂

I woke up in the morning with basically no energy from a long day yesterday, forced myself to run, and mysteriously ended up gaining more energy than I had expended before the run before proceeding to go to the gym while somehow forgetting to bring my gym card with me…

Only to have the nice girl who works near the front of the gym (who is also one of my ARC readers for The Little Robot That Could Paint – thank you Christina!!!!) let me in so I could add another day to my ongoing workout streak of… What was it?

Yeah, it’s 1502 days straight that I’ve gone to the gym straight (or exercised) without losing my streak.

Uh, a fitness influencer I am not, but if I don’t go to the gym, it just feels… Wrong?

Incidentally, I hope you don’t think this means that I’m some hyper-disciplined machine thing, because that couldn’t be further from the truth.

I’ve failed at a ton of things, but somehow, this is one of those things that’s stayed long enough that it’s become a habit – by no means is it or has it ever been the case that I’ve just been hanging out, doing my thing, keeping at perfection no matter the circumstance; no way freaking Jose, that has NOT been me.

I failed at consistently posting on YouTube (I am monetized, though!) albeit partly because there’s not enough content about ergonomic chairs to make (lol wait till you discover my second persona), failed at writing consistently in the past, failed at X, Y, Z, W, a, b, c, you name it! Some of these things are things that I’d definitely like to come back to (like YouTube), while others are things that I think I’ll be leaving behind for now…

But none of that changes the fact that I maintain a very healthy respect for showing up consistently.

Showing up helps you build a compounding effect, yes, and it would be clichéd if I were just to mention that that’s all it does; I’ll speak about that a little bit more in context of the thing I can actually say that I kept with for now.

Showing up has taught me that yes, showing up does help a TON in bringing you to where you want to go (mainly because I realized that working out and exercising is something that you absolutely have to make into an equilibrium if you truly want sustainable results), but it’s equally taught me that if you try to get to where you want to go without a sense of intention and merely abide by the idea that things can be automated away, you’re going to get nowhere and will just get swept in the wind.

For example, while I was working up somewhere during days 1350 and 1420, I remember that I was gaining a ton of weight – why so? I was treating the exercise just as a means to an end, a process that I had to get to, while neglecting my diet and sleep (which I *currently* need to improve).

I was going through the motions and believing somehow (and very wrongly) that there wasn’t a need for planning and thinking, that essentially as long as I put in the bare minimum each day, everything was peachy keen and great.

It was not.

I gained weight, lost self-motivation, experienced some depression (granted, once again, there was a breakup at the time), and just let myself go… Even though I was working out every single day and hadn’t missed a day.

Does it seem strange?

Well I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to accept that because that’s what happened T_T

So, you might ask.

If that happened to you despite the fact that you showed up all the time, what’s the value of showing up in the first place?

I guess my answer to that is that it showed me that showing up was merely a necessary condition but it wasn’t a sufficient one – that there were a ton of other things that I had to do in this strange and epic journey towards actually feeling and looking confident in front of a mirror in order to achieve some of the outcomes that I seek to achieve for my life…

Something that’s made me try to spend my time a lot more efficiently (and you would know what I mean if you’ve seen me in real life before).

Anyway, speaking of spending time… I spent maybe seven hours talking to different people earlier before heading over to the church that I currently attend, the Damansara Utama Methodist Church; one of the more intense days that I’ve had here in a while, but definitely something very much welcome.

The result of that epic day?

I think I’m going to have an awesome sleep tonight.

Goodnight dear readers, and thanks for reading my ramblings 🙂

Yours,
V.