G’day ya fucks. Happy Tuesday.
I was late in getting this bad boy out because as I’m sure you can tell, I’ve switched up the platform for these changelogs. I’ve decided to just start using my own site instead to give these weekly letters a more permanent home.
The backlog for these will start building up here, that way new peeps will have an easier time reading through them.
I haven’t figured out a way to embed this post fully into an email, so I’m just linking out to it for now.
You’ll still get a weekly email notification for it.
Lemme know your thoughts on this (just wanna know if it’s a deal breaker / if I should spend time on a proper solution, or if this workaround is good enough).
Anyways, let’s get on with my extremely profound weekly ramblings.
/life
Just did a fat shit
Exorcising a demon
Bali food spicy
– a rando haiku™
I had a bit of a deliberately slow one this week. I met a cool German dude (hi Luis) at the start of the week and within 2 hours of chatting we were booking an airbnb getaway to Ubud.
Oh the joys of staying in a hostel – the people you meet, the places you go.
Compared to where I’m staying at the moment in Canggu, Ubud is a lot more relaxed and slow paced, so it sounded like a great idea.
So I headed off on a little 3 day hiatus.
It was quite serene.
Cool Airbnbs like this are expensive af though.
I ain’t made of money and I’ve got a long road ahead of me before I can even sustainably stay in the hostels here.
So after a bit of R&R I headed back to Canggu and my lovely routine that I’ve been slowly building up over these last couple of weeks.
/exercise
Last week I said I wanted to get a start on slapping exercise into my routine.
To that extent, I am proud to announce the beginning of my career as a professional surfer.
I hit up the beach a few times this week and now my arms are dead asf. Who knew that just paddling out would be so difficult?
I did however manage to ride a couple of broken waves on my big ass soft top beginner board. I’m having an absolute blast with it and it’s a great example of working some sneaky background exercise into my life.
Exercise is hardly exercise when you thoroughly enjoy it.
Speaking of thoroughly enjoying something…
CrossFit!
…was something I did not thoroughly enjoy.
I tried it for the first time a few hours ago and it was pretty fuccin gruelling in the moment.
I’m extremely glad I went through with it though.
Even though my legs can’t safely take me down a flight of stairs now, I’m sitting here writing this changelog, feeling like I’m on top of the world.
And I ain’t even sipping a cup of coffee.
/drugs
I just arrived back in Canggu on Saturday to a new hostel.
Fresh faces, new friends, different adventures.
I met a chill guy from Singapore (hi Jacob) and we went out with a group of peeps for some Saturday night debauchery.
If you’ll recall from last week’s CL, I swore off alcohol completely (specifically, the binge drinking that’s synonymous with going out to clubs).
I also promised that you could backhand the shit outta me if I didn’t uphold this.
So you can imagine my tension as I sat with my new group of friends who were warming up for a night out.
Everyone around me was sinking shots, and I sat there questioning my existence.
What’s the point of it all?
Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Why am I doing this?
I knew I had a reason for this, but it was buried deep in the recesses of my mind.
Something, something, saving a fuck ton of money and not writing myself off for tomorrow, something, something.
But it wasn’t enough.
I reached for the shot glass, pulled it up to my nose, took a whiff.
And then it hit me…
*slap*
The experience of a thousand digital backhands played out in my mind.
It wasn’t a pleasant one.
I put the shot down and ordered a pizza.
If I ain’t tricking my body into a drug induced energetic high, I gotta get that energy from somewhere else right?
At first it’s a little tricky cutting loose on the dance floor completely sober, but after a few nights and a little warmup it’s the exact same experience as if I were seeing double.
Minus the hangover, minus the massive hit to the wallet, minus the liver and brain damage.
Now that’s a win in my books.
I did get this question a lot though…
“Why aren’t you drinking?”
The easiest way to answer this, I found, is to explain to them that “I am drinking” and then chug some water.
That satisfied a few people, but occasionally they’d press a little further…
“Why aren’t you drinking alcohol?“
I’d reply with my reasoning…
“Because I want to save money and I want to learn how to have fun without it.”
I got a lot of puzzled faces.
It reminds me of this scene from The Wolf of Wallstreet.
Despite all odds, I managed to make it through the week, and I’m thanking my past self that I did.
I’m feeling pretty goddamn great about it now, even though there was a lot of FOMO in the moment.
/content
I had a trial run of posting stories on Instagram recently and after a few days of doing it consistently, I can say with absolute certainty that I fucking hate it and will never do it again.
A couple reasons:
- They disappear in 24hrs and are extremely temporary (no compounding body of work) ((yes ik u can highlight it, but who tf looks at highlights??))
- I have to keep the app installed on my phone for it
So it’s a no-go for me. But hey, it was worth a shot.
I just hate having the app installed because it’s way too easy to get sucked into it. At one point I found myself just scrolling the shit outta it for hours without even noticing.
As soon as I realised what I was doing, I looked up from my phone in disgust and deleted the shit outta the app.
I do love the visual storytelling aspect of Instagram though, so I reckon I’ll start doing some good ol’ classic posts.
Once a week I’ll install the app, dump out my camera roll, then promptly uninstall the bitch and sleep soundly 🙂
I’ve just recently gotten into the habit of defining a photo of the day, which is why this CL is littered with so many images.
After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
If you’re keen on some more pics, I’ll start doing actual posts over there.
If you don’t use the app, I don’t blame you whatsofuckingever. You’ll get the cream of the crop in these CLs.
/friends
I have met sooooo bloody many people over the last couple of weeks, and I’m noticing a pattern start to emerge:
- Meet new person
- Become good mates with new person
- New person leaves and you never see them again
- See step 1
There’s just so much churn.
I’m finding it hard to not be cynical about it.
“Why bother making friends if they’re leaving tomorrow?”
Especially with girls, it’s like – what’re we gonna do, fuck around for two weeks and then never see each other again?
I guess that’s just the nature of fast travel / backpacking. It also doesn’t help that the majority of the people I’m meeting are in hostels, so I’m kinda asking for it lol.
Two weeks is better than no weeks though, so maybe it’s time to just lean in and enjoy the moment while it lasts.
This is why I’m really keen to build up my monthly income so I can afford to stay at more longer term locations, like New Zealand / any place with a visa >= 90 days.
I really wanna lean into those slow travel vibes.
Stay at a spot for months on end, learn the language, and put down some roots.
I’ve got around 5 weeks left here in Bali though, so I’ll just enjoy myself for the time being.
There’s no point in having a nihilistic attitude when it comes to all of this, because we’ll all be dead in < 80 years anyway.
🙂
I’m sure there’s cheap countries with longer term visas available though, any suggestions? (I’d like to learn Spanish hehe)
/work
In order to build up dat income so I can afford to live in more pricier places long-term, I’ve gotta get down to BIDNESS.
(side note: I’m fucking ITCHING to hit the decks and do some more mixing, T-3.5 months until DJ rando makes his return)
I didn’t get up to much programming this week, I spent the majority of the time just hanging out with mates, chilling tf out, spending a little too much money at restaurants, and vibin with my fellow monke brethren.
Not every week has to be filled with pure grindage, sometimes it’s just as important to take things slow and breathe.
I did manage to get a few hours in however – I ported the rendering of my pixel sim over to Telescope, so that’s all set up for me to lean into this next week.
Nothing visual to show, it’s the same image as last week, just a different codebase.
I didn’t even end up writing any d3d11 code, I just used Ryan’s existing high level draw API to render a texture that I filled myself.
I’m really looking forward to leaning into some more pixel sim stuff this week. I reckon I can make a “game” out of this and publish it to steam.
And when I say game, I really mean tech demo hehe.
The plan at the moment is to get all the tech in for a large pixel sim and build a really nice editor around it for people to use and make their own maps with.
And when I say people, I’m mainly referring to my future self.
This entire game is really just going to be a front for me creating a good pixel editor so I can use it in the future for the dream game.
Pixel simulation, large (practically infinite?) maps, and a good interface for building out maps.
Kinda like Powder Toy, but on crack.
Navier stokes, I’m coming for yo ass.
If you’d like to help me not run outta money while doin this – supporting me and these changelogs in the process – then there’s a few ways to do so over here. Some cost money, some don’t.
I’m inching closer to sustainability each day thanks to y’all – I’m at around $600 / month recurring at the moment and need around $1000 / month to be sustainable here in Bali / South East Asia.
I’d love to do a breakdown of that number and all my income sources, goals, expenses, etc, in a blog post soon.
As far as habits go, for this next week I’m going to be focusing on just waking up at the same time everyday and getting the day started right. I’ll chain that with another crossfit session later in the week and also do some more surfing.
That’s all I’ve got for ya this week though. I’m off to go get some shit DONE.
Have a great week homie, go get em.
– randy