It’s been three months since my last check-in post, so here we are with another edition. I have to admit, the last few months flew past and I almost forgot I was supposed to write this. But here we are, with the same questions as usual:

1. What was good?
2. What wasn’t so good?
3. Goals for the months ahead?

Let’s do it.

The Good

1. Happiness
I’ve been in a great mood over the past few weeks. Some little wins include:

• Spending quality time with my family and partner;
• Writing consistently;
• Breaking my phone addiction;
• Reaching a Bullet rating of 1600 on Chess.com;
• Finishing a Deep Learning course on Coursera;
• Moving into a new house;
• Reading some great books.

Yet, there’s also been some internal wins that have taken place. Perhaps the biggest one is being comfortable with being myself. For the first time ever, I don’t really care how other people see me. It doesn’t matter if it’s praise or insults – nothing seems that personal anymore. It’s sort of arrogant, but beautifully liberating.

2. Writing
Still writing two posts a week – am thinking of increasing this to three a week soon.

What I’ve recently realised is that I don’t create ideas when I write, it’s more that I find ideas. There is so much junk in surface-level awareness that to find interesting thoughts, I need to dig. One of the goals of writing is to dig for as many of these higher-quality thoughts as possible.

So, writing more can only help me understand myself better, which is a great thing.

3. Phone use
I’ve finally broken my phone addiction. This is huge. I now have more control over my time and am actually aware of how I’m using my devices.

Two exercises that I have to thank:

• Putting my phone usage on my home screen;
• Setting a challenge for <2 hours of screen time per day, per week.

The not-so-Good

1. Fitness
Due to injury, I haven’t been running at all these last three months. Running was such a core part of my identity last year and now it’s been taken away. Although I’ve been swimming to compensate, it still feels different.

It feels like being a runner is a title I can no longer claim, which is kind of sad. Maybe swimming will be the new thing – we’ll see.

2. YouTube
I was meant to continue with my Books I’ve Loved YouTube series, but have failed to record anything. I could blame factors like being interstate or not having my PC for this inactivity, but the truth is I’ve just been lazy.

The toughest thing about YouTube is the energy. I’m naturally a mellow person and have a default energy level of around a 3/10. On camera though, it feels like I have to be a 7-8/10 to be watchable. Getting to this state is exhausting.

Yet, I recently had a chat with some friends from YouTube and they told me to just be myself. To them, seeing someone be themselves is one of the best qualities in any personal channel. That was some great advice.

Now that I’m settled into a new apartment, I have no excuses to not make videos. Let’s do it.

Goals

1. Make one YouTube video a month;
2. Change this domain name to erictian.com (I’m kind of done with neotericreflections.com – this was initially intended to be anonymous but now I’m ready to own my thoughts);
3. Post 3x a week: Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.