Manan's notes

202207101318 My impossible future self

Inspired by this article. If you haven't read it already, go ahead and read it. It'll be worth it, trust me.

It seems impossible that I'll be someone who has an established online presence. Someone who writes regularly, has people following his work, and has found an online scenius of like-minded people.

Nothing else comes to mind as obviously impossible right now, which I think says a lot about the progress I've made since the last time I (informally) did this exercise a couple of years ago:

  1. At the time, being someone who worked out consistently (and could see the benefits of doing so) felt unattainable. While I haven't worked out consistently over the past year, I have achieved the vital goal of making exercise an integrated part of my lifestyle.
    • I've been walking roughly 8000 steps a day for the past 2+ years.
    • I trained for and ran a 5k. I also trained for a 10k, although I got COVID and wasn't able to run it.
    • I've finally found an exercise routine that I've managed to stick to for a consistent period. I feel excellent after I work out, and I've learned about and invested my time/money/attention into crucial supplementary concepts like nutrition and sleeping well.
      • I've seen minor qualitative improvements in my physical appearance and weight PRs. Two of my goals for this upcoming year are to 1) work out consistently enough so that these improvements are major instead of minor and 2) track data in this base so I can see those improvements qualitatively.
  2. I didn't think I was someone that people truly cared about in social settings. I felt insecure about my life and didn't think most of it was worth sharing with other people. This is no longer true — I now feel very comfortable about my social worth and don't feel FOMO or jealousy when I see other people thriving in social situations. (There are many reasons for this change, but probably the most important one was that I lucked into finding a fantastic group of friends who appreciated me and with whom I could be completely myself.)
    • I still don't share much of myself online, but I plan to change that with this blog!