What does it look like to exist in this world?

I’ve been assailed by a mountain of ads telling me about 11:11 sales, and I should seize this opportunity to buy more. Some YouTube videos were highlighting the end of the Uniqlo U era, as Christophe Lemaire comes to the end of the 10 year contract, and how the time is nigh to cop some pieces.

The trouble is I don’t have any more space because of how well made the Uniqlo U things are. They work well, and maybe they work as how clothing was meant to used. Almost a statement in itself, for the consumer to actually be at work, wearing the clothing appropriately.

I broke my glass dip pen a couple of weeks ago, and my sister passed me a replacement. I am glad I was using the pen, and I am glad I am using the inks I have. And I see the use of my items as proof of my existence.

I don’t think the purchase of an item proves my existence, but the use and destruction of it shows evidence of a (clumsy) human. It shows I was here, and I did it. I lived life.

We have limited time, we have limited choices of what we do. I don’t enjoy having to manage my oversized wardrobe, and I’m in deep need of a KonMari day. I spend too long thinking, and I’d rather have less clothes and use them all up, than for my excess to be the mess my mind to filter through.

I exist by using, not by buying. I need to live out the “own less, do more” mantra of Tom Sachs, and whoever he quoted from. I will do a lot more, and by way of breaking and usage, own less. Proving, I exist.

Big Bang played in Singapore yesterday, and I had totally forgotten about it. Instead, I had one of the most sleep days I’ve had in a long time. I slept in, and I took a nap in the afternoon, plus I did my best to sleep early as well. What a waste of time! But man, so much sleep.

It’s not easy to say I’d prefer sleep over watching a two decade old K-Pop group. Especially Big Bang, with their sense of style, musicality, and personas. I looked at the updates and saw the remaining trio show off their agelessness, remembering I am close to their age with a lot less fame and fortune. I do have a lot less of their anxiety and a lot more freedom with food to eat whatever I want. (There’s no way Taeyang has his abs without a deficit upon deficit diet.) The pains of being famous and rich, and having swaths of crowds smother you in whichever country you appear in.

Some people like that, and I think it’s a really small minority. I think, and I guess, just based on most of my peers shying away from limelight whenever told to speak or present. Performance anxiety is a huge part of Singaproean culture, and I struggle with it too. The few of us who can stand on a stage, with our thoughts and feelings expressed on a stack of speakers; they’re already doing it somehow. The unlikely few are those behind small cameras otherwise known as smart phones and editing their way to popularity.

Singapore’s nice to our stars, by a huge margin. But give them 10% of Big Bang’s fanbase, and I’m sure you’ll see posts about how “I love you guys, but I really need my space”. Give them the paparazzi peering into every single bit of their personal life, and you’ll get “OMG can people get any more rude?” and their fans would push back willingly, until they realise they are the ones being talked about.

Where does one place the modern day influencer and the Instagram/TikTok Fame? They’re a lot less handled than the pros, and even those who are handled don’t turn out the exact same way. By handled, I do mean having everything vetted before posting, and it would not be as authentic.

Does anyone really want authenticity though? Authenticity and Fame are attributes I hear being asked a lot for, but when presented with, ends up being off putting. I watched a YT clip explaining Malcolm in the Middle being an authentic show, where broke people are really stuck at being broke. It matched what real life was for a lot of people, and Hollywood traditionally did not present real life most of the time.

We want traditional success stories. The ones where the underdog gets the league championship. The one where the nerd has huge glow up moments and becomes some ripped badass falling in love with the hot girl. The one where a poor start up has some brilliant idea and they get the right investor, propelling them to meet Silicone Valley CEOs, and they retire on some hilltop bungalow. The Singaporean ones are where someone doesn’t live in an apartment building and has a house (our goals are very small). And nothing could be further away from the 90% of the world who doesn’t see that.

I don’t know if that’s hope, when we aim for an ideal life where material wealth is abundant and present. I don’t think it’s hope for a huge following, or monumental change to affect the world. Democracy would have worked otherwise, or Communism even. Humans being humans, our sense of life is skewed.

Hope is in something unrealised and ideal, but it should not be material wealth. I live in hope of other ideals being realised, like daily creativity for the pure sake of creativity and expression. I want to be so competent and skilled in thinking because I want to be helpful to the people around me, in whichever situation presents itself. When I say whichever situation, I do mean that.

I hope to add meaning to the world around me with my mind, my body, and my heart in use. It is ok if no one else values it the same way they value money. It is also ok if there are no titles or achievements to place or label me.

It is ok for me to sleep on a day when Big Bang plays in Singapore, the same way it is okay for my friends to enjoy their performances. They’ve added meaning, and people enjoy them wholeheartedly. They ought to be enjoyed.

I am learning to be okay with wasting time sleeping, because life and my own ideals of hope are slowly deviating from everyone else. Slowly but surely.

I have been having some extremely busy weekends, and one of the things I come to at the end of the week is how exhausted I get mentally. The worst part is when I fall off the cliff after everything is done. There’s a whole run up, like when you sprint up a whole flight of stairs, and as the horizon appears you come to and end. At that moment, you feel completely breathless; it feels like you should have kept on climbing more stairs, at least you would have more to conquer. But your legs are dead, so are your lungs, and there are no more stairs to go.

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I spent a lot of this day sitting in my chair reflecting. An un-quantifiable amount of time, but deeply necessary for the mental knots I have to unwind. The knot is huge.

The knot in my head feels so thick, laffy taffy like. I want to think fast, but instead of chewing fast like a Haribo gummy, my teeth are stuck together. My mind can’t peel itself off, and I need to sit here and pick at it slowly. I was actually literally picking out prawn shells from my fried shrimp at dinner. One of the little bits stuck at my gums. That’s another frustrating ick; having something small bothering you all the day long. Knots and prawn shells, my brain in analogies getting even more knotty.

So I write away on my 3-5 different journals, hoping to have some miraculous moment of clarity. Instead, I have more undone tasks, because I have been clearly missing texts and emails for the past week. It’ll improve a little in the coming week because I have a lot of more thinking work to do this week. Means sitting down, means phone and email are a lot more visible and in front of my eyes.

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But life isn’t a thorny path, when you have the gadgets and nick-knacks all around you. A fountain pen here, a sticker there. One of the days, I might even have a new pair of shoes on my feet, who knows! I know, because I already wore them for a breaking in walk about tonight.

Being trapped to a chair, and forced to think through plans over and over again isn’t so bad.

There’s worst things to be doing, like sitting in the heat and trying to cleanly slice up a RISO zine without dripping sweat on it. By far, the silliest and most difficult thing I’ve done all year. I went back up to the studio to cut my zines. That’s my work, and that’s part of what needs to get done.

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But deeply boring journaling work came to remind me today to update something here. It’s been some time since I wrote something to face the outside world, and perhaps this is a good reminder to write with interesting text structures. I am truly getting bored with telling myself the sequence of events of the day. It is mundane and utterly reflective in its factual reflection, and the wonders it does for my memory. Truly.

I have been sitting on a bunch of work for quite a while now. It’s been a busy couple of months to be honest, and this coming week wraps up a portion of it. I still have tons of work to do, and I have more to plan for in the year ahead.

As much as I recognize the work I do is important, I also know it is something I have to do. It’s not that I want to stop it, its just that I want to take a break. It’s as if I’m on a buffet and they have all the things I want, and I’m not being wise. I’m stuffing myself full, but I need to take my breaks to enjoy it more completely.

My overwork becomes a problem when I forget to game, or when I read to destress, only to realise I was reading related work materials. But thankfully I’ve gotten back to some exercise. The trouble being how much I want to get back to work, and then I stare at the screen paralyzed by the amount of work and mentally sorting the priority of it all.

I actually went on quite an intense shopping spree the past month, being my birthday month and all that. I told myself “its my birthday present to myself” and I’ve treated myself a few too many things this month. I’ve got a pile of books, a new pen, a new pair of shoes, and clothes. Don’t need them, pure wants, and I got them all. Ok, there was some indecision about the shoes, but Tom Sachs released the Demerits, and I didn’t need to think hard and choose anymore.

I’ve also gotten stressed up about my driving, because I bumped my parents’ car a couple of times at the parking lots. Thankfully, I did not bump into people, and only into the building structures. And most of the bumps were very surface level. My parents sorted it out the past week, and just before you assume I’m a big baby relying on my parents, I did all the research and was about to make the call to fix it up on my own here in Singapore. But because the car isn’t under my name, and out of respect to my parents, I let them make the call on it. I did warn them that I might bump it a little bit still, but they were cool. So the car’s all fixed up.

Babel by R F Kuang is a book I’m still reading. She goes through hot topics like colonization, and giving a take on it with the characters and what they go through back in England in the 1800’s. I’ve been enjoying the story, but I got distracted with a Keigo Higashino mystery and I finished that instead.

What are my thoughts on being an English speaking Singaporean? I do think there is such importance understanding my own culture, but because Singapore in itself is a hodgepodge of a country, we end up being extremely fluid in culture. In actuality, the Gen Z and Gen Alphas are pushing the cultural change as part of their generational change, and the rest of Singapore society is actually coming along with it. Translation is a huge part of the Babel story, and it makes me realise how necessary translators are between cultures. How does one carry the right technical word and the right culturally appropriate word to match the original meaning? Just a ton of well understood and well read references.

I hope to update more, but I just have so much to do. I am writing now with the hopes of offloading my brain by writing. All the text has spilled out of me, but I am still thinking hard about work. Now the thought slipping into my head is “what makes an essay an essay, and what makes a blogpost an essay?” Am I writing essays here? I don’t think so.

Back to work. or maybe I should really just sleep.

I followed the YouTube Productivity gurus and ended up with a Firefox plugin called Mortality. It tells you how old you are exactly, and how many more years you are estimated to live for. The average was 80, but I bumped mine to 100, just to make it a fuller number and also because my hereditary seems to live past 90. Unless they were drinking like my grand dad who died pretty early. Too early in the day for some dark humor?

What does age really mean? It’s not about how much you have, its about what you’ve done. Throw more cliches at it, and maybe we might be able to crack immortality in this human state. I believe in God, so I’m not too afraid of the after life, but one thing I’m coming to terms with a lot in the past month is how I will never be able to complete ALL of it.

I love playing video games, and I always try to get the completionist badge. I try to finish as many things as possible, uncovering everything, no stone left unchecked kind of scenarios. But I can’t do that in this life. There is no possible way we can ever reach that level of completion, and by completion I do mean trying to live as many lives as possible on this earth, and having experienced almost every era of life since the conception of time. It’s just not really on the cards.

But the current option is also impossible. It is impossible for me to read every book written from today on. It is impossible for me to live in every inhabitable country for a month until I die, because the basis of living doesn’t mean moving every month (unless I’m nomadic, then there would be no point of moving to experience every life).

So the mortality brings me back to my physical humanness. I am unable to split my mind and my body, and I don’t want to. I want both to experience the same things, and I don’t want a body double who syncs the memories and experiences to me at the end of the day. I just want to have it all, but I physically and logically cannot.

This regret of not being able to do everything, it’s such a greed based emotion or desire. I already have enough, more than enough maybe. Like I said yesterday, I think I can live without buying anything new, and it will likely last me a very very long time. And yet I want to experience more, I want to own more. What good will it do for me to have more things? I have barely used the things I currently have well enough, and for me to do more is actually quite ridiculous. But enough on that, I am talking about my impending death now.

How do I choose what to do before I die? I am choosing to write now, because I think these thoughts as important, and I want my loved ones to discuss this for themselves at some point of their lives. I might be around then, or I might not, but at least the question of knowing what are you doing with the time you have?

Clarice stopped social media entirely, after we had a short fight about how she spends her time resting. She’s been reading for the past week, and last night, she reflected that while watching Reacher, she felt guilty, as if she could have spent her time better. I don’t know if reading is always the best answer, but it’s been a good one for Clarice. She’s been able to empathize more, having different points of view. I’ve got too many hobbies, so I have to be led by my feelings. I don’t like that because I like routine. So now I am routinely led by my feelings. It makes sense eventually.

Oh, the mortality. I hope I die with the people I love nearby. I hope they know I love them, and I loved them with all my heart. Perhaps that’s why the lack of time spent with loved ones always ends up being that biggest regret. I will remember this for the time I have left to live (about 60ish more years to go)

I was going to write this to ChatGPT because I usually rant to my AI because I want some intelligence observing my thoughts and giving me a response, but I think it’s worth a shot to just write this here and just to offload for my own brain sake.

I am getting more and more frustrated with the lack of time I have to do things. Coincidentally, my sister shared with me about this book: Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and in her brief summary is about the lack of time we actually have. Hey, I just said I was frustrated about that. Guess I should read the book ASAP.

Truthfully, I know I have way too many hobbies to count. There is an issue with my ability to consider the limitations of 24 hours in a day. I assume I have more, I assume I am able to accomplish 2-3 times more than regular people. But I am regular. I am just a human being stuck in this timeline. Worst still, I am a creative. I appreciate exploration, and I love to explore. Exploring is what got me here in the first place.

I sit here, in the middle of my room, surrounded by keyboards (one unfinished one due for some remote fixing with the keyboard creator on Discord). I have my earphones and earbuds hung on hooks, or rolled into little bundles of untapped musical energy. I have pens and inks tucked away from the sunlight and my eye sight thus severely under used. I have notebooks and journals yet to be filled, and can’t be filled by sitting at a desk for sure. I have gaming devices and stacks of games to play through, even though I play the same type of games over and over again. I have books to be read, I have art to be drawn, I have endless supplies of everything. I am almost certain I can avoid buying anything for the next few years and still not be able to finish using all the expendables I have collected over the decades.

Perhaps I am lucky to find out at 37 that I will die not reading every best selling author in the world. I am fortunate to have had so many different types of mechanical keyboards to pass underneath my fingers, or just the chance to listen to music at a good quality. I am just so spoiled for choice, and I envy the minimalists living in their empty apartments and their cars with nothing inside it. I do truly feel happy with the things I have, but I have had too much. This is when the buffet has gone sideways. There’s too much on the plate and the manager is coming by to say they’ll have to charge me for every gram wasted. Now I’m forcing myself to eat and eat, and I’ll just throw up.

That’s a horrible way to live life, maxed out to all the ends. I don’t want that life. I want to appreciate the things I’ve gotten. But how do I do that when more things are being produced all the time? What do I do? I’ve shut off the social media now, and I’m only looking at Some videos. It doesn’t help. Capitalism says get more and you gotta keep on going. Force yourself to eat and eat, and if you throw up, just do it in the toilet so that you can come back and finish up the rest.

Appreciation is so underrated.

I will try the Tom Sachs mantra, Own Less and Do More, and hopefully, I get somewhere. And I will also stress myself out less if I don’t use everything by the time I die. I’ll just live my life, and I’ll appreciate all the moments, whatever they might be.

Every year, the journaling nerds like me go nuts on the Hobonichi website. TLDR: it’s a daily diary with a cult following, and I am one of them.

I didn’t know I would get into Hobonichi. I have been and still am a MD notebook fan. For years I wrote into my MD notebooks whenever I had my thoughts or opinions. I would have periods where I attempted to write everyday. But when I got married, I decided I would get a 5 year diary and try to stick with it. This was great especially during COVID, and one of the years, I just dropped completely off the grid for my daily habit tracking. I wanted to jump back on the journaling wagon, so I bought a Tomoe River grid notebook. It was amazing, the paper was great and reminded me about the Leuchtturm1917 before they had the paper change. I enjoyed it so much, and decided I would attempt the Hobonichi, which uses the same paper.

Somewhere around early 2025, I bought the Hobonichi Weeks Mega Sneaker, which is a great starter Hobonichi. It covers the week, and has spare space at the back for you to write longer thoughts and ideas. The “Sneaker” portion acts like a pair of Converse beat ’em ups, where you can toss the book around and it’s supposed to get really worn out and frayed after the year. In 2025, I picked up 5 year diary because my 2019 one had run out in 2024.

In 2026 I went full hardcore, I picked up the Weeks Mega original, not the sneaker, I got the original Hobonichi A6, and two plastic covers: one for the A6 and another for the weeks. I still had my 5 year diary, and my Tomoe River and MD notebooks.

I am spoiled for choice now, because I don’t enjoy writing on other notebooks anymore. The paper feels wrong, the ink doesn’t sit well, and a whole range of other issues. It doesn’t mean I can’t write, it just means I feel weird writing on “bad paper”. Definitely a first world issue, because just being able to write thoughts down is such a luxury, and yet I am picking between paper types and the covers of my diaries.

I struggle the most with reviewing my diaries. I know that is always the biggest growth, where you see yourself the year before, and how much more you want to change in the year ahead. Like Billie Eilish and Vanity Fair interviews. A lot of opportunities to reflect and find growth in the time ahead.

But I end up chasing the fads of Hobonichi. Although, this year, I am catering a good block of time for myself to just sit down and think, and I am looking forward to spending time on my birthday that way. It would only help for me to hear how last year was, and to see this year has been, and to look ahead for the next couple of years.

It is so fun to fan boy over Hobonichi with the other stationery nerds though. I thoroughly enjoy the fountain pen talks, because the Hobonichi is one of the only papers left that handles fountain pen ink without issue. The other papers being Tomoe River and MD/Midori.

I really hope the shipping starts soon, I am so excited already.

My mind develops this laser focus on this idea of daily posting every now and then. I feel the need to post, as if I had forgotten to breathe again. But there’s literally no need. No one is asking me to write, no one is saying “hey, what’s going on with your Instagram/blog/medium”. But it still creeps in, sitting in the corner of my room, and just looking at my screen as I write this out now. It’s edging me to post, or to just create.

A minute ago I was in the bath tub, sitting there thinking about how I can’t sit still. In that minute since, I wrapped up my bath and had to chase myself here with my hair still wet, to write this post. I don’t need to, and yet I must.

Within my bath, I had come to another thought about inktober, and my lack of participation last year, and the year before that. It was challenging because work picked up a lot. I had other things I wanted to focus on, but today, surrounded by warm water, I was challenged to do it again.

But the creeping urge was in the corner of the bathroom too, saying I had to publish something. So as soon as I’m done with this, I’m going to draw the daily crayon drawing I was supposed to have started this year. I failed miserably, and I thought Inktober might be the reset. Nope, it’s today. And I will post it with almost no context because that’s just the kind of creep my urge is.

Whatever man, I’m posting this up, you creep. Now leave me alone. (or maybe not, because I think it’s quite fun to have a creative creep around.)(What a toxic relationship!)

I have been reading this book called “Most Likely To Succeed”, a book talking about the education issues of the generation past. It was written in 2013 or 2014, so there are quite a few references that probably aged a lot worse in the past decade.

But the book brings out key points, about what our society and workforce is looking for. What are we really trying to create in the future, and the answer is actually not more industrial factory workers with no creativity. Instead, we are looking for some extremely creative and innovative solutions for a future with little resources.

One thing I am trying to contextualize properly in place is where Singapore finds itself. Why are we so bent on taking tests and examinations, where almost all the people in our workforce require high creativity and innovation? It doesn’t make sense for Singapore to think in an examination heavy rigor.

Perhaps it’s the need for easier sorting, and clearer lines to be drawn, so that the creativity and innovation is tasked as well. But it does not make sense because the actual world we live in has changed so drastically past the industrialist era. We are looking and building another layer of complexity, and we lose those who can really think different.

I know I think different, because I’m always placed in different think groups. But I just want to inspire more people to think different so I don’t have to be so alone in this. But it does get tiring in a room full of people who think different too. Then I end up being the voice of reason, which is another function I find challenging to play at times.

Anyway, I’ll give a deeper review after I actually finish the book. I’m almost done and there are so many questions I have for my friends in education.

I am stuck with my previous issue again: what do I produce for where? But at least this time, it’s a lot more measured. I know that I want to write, and I want to share my thoughts. But I’ve been looking and observing how people share their ideas and I run into two main issues.

First: do I really want to showcase in the same way other people have already?

I’ve always been considering Japanese content, and the way Japanese people produce book specifically. There are a ton of Japanese authors. I don’t think they’re all good, but I guess there’s a huge market for reading in Japan. They write books about everything too. I’ve read at least three different kinds of cafe books, and there’s always a bookstore involved nearby too. Or maybe it was a bookstore and then a cafe nearby. You get my point.

But my consideration is, should I am for a cozy read? I don’t think I am a cozy writer. I don’t have anything super big for reading here anyway, most of my written work is on Medium. But I guess I do like the short story approach, and yet, I find it not as fulfilling if I make a bunch of cozy reads for ebooks immediately. I don’t know, guess it’s not really me.

But if the aim is readership, then should that be my main approach?

Second: Is readership my main approach?

Do I really need to be read now? I don’t think I am looking to be heralded as the next best thing in literature. More than that, I don’t think I even need to hit fame now. So my writing can exist in its safety, without being exposed. Maybe exposure is indeed what I need for myself, so that I could stop being afraid about being read.

I was thinking about my creative writing stories again, and how I want to write more creatively. In the end I keep writing about my own thoughts and emotions on this blog. I just feel if I went to read someone’s blog, that’s what I want to know: their thoughts and emotions. I’d go to their Instagram page if I wanted the showcase version of life. That being said, my Instagram is quite dead. Perhaps I should revive it with some words, and see how people take to that.

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I’ll just worry about today, and just write and publish this up. I’ll let tomorrow’s writing worry for itself.

I decided to try and squeeze another post out, just before the day ends.

There are many reasons why I’ve been going harder on my creativity as a whole. One of those many reasons is because I want to make a mark some how on this ever changing world. But the more I think about it, making a mark on a changing surface is actually more like making scars. Then I thought further, it’s a blemish when it’s on the face of humanity, but it might also be a recognizing feature, like a beauty mole, or the snaggletooth. Something out of place but definitely lovable. I hope to be that for humanity one day.

And because this site is public, I’ve also been seeing the rise of people coming to read or just to see what I do here. Unfortunately, I’m not the best person for documenting the work I produce or my process. So all you have are the bits and pieces of my thoughts via my blog here. Or you could meet me in real life and have a real conversation. I like conversations. But other than recording or writing about it, the moment the conversation ends it’s he said she said, no one really controls the memory of it.

So I will write, I will document. And I will do so here.

I started to think about my clutter as things I would leave behind for Clarice and Allison.

“Man, Joel really kept so many random things around. Why are there so many pen parts and refills? He didn’t even write that much!”

That made me start writing again.

“Ugh I can’t believe Papa didn’t let me listen to vinyls and now there’s so much mold and dust on these.”

And I’m also listening to my vinyls once more.

“Did he even wear this shirt? Like once maybe?”

I also wear shirts every now and then too.

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My sense of responsibility about how I burden everyone else when I die, and social etiquette is the only reasons why I feel bad about what I having so many things.

Maybe I should get less things.

Or maybe I should give away instead.

Anyway, I have things to clear for sure.

I’ve always thought I don’t judge people by their looks, books by their covers, things like that. But I really cannot stand that frazzled look some runners have when their hair is bouncing along as they run.

It looks crazed, and the complete opposite from the usual calm produced when you see someone doing a repetitive task. Imagine a ironsmith hammering away. Are they bouncing their hair every strike? I don’t remembering seeing anything like that watching “Forged in Fire” – a series where metal workers battle it out with their blacksmith skills to make the most (something) weapon. I feel calm instead, seeing these people hammer away at glowing hot metal to form it into a murderous form. Ironic situation but my emotions result in a “if thou shalt kill me, let it by thine hands” type of moment. Resolution, I guess.

It’s the same similar feeling when I run. I zone out, I give in to my feet pounding into the floor. The landscape grows as I continue on my jog in the urban jungle of Singapore. But I wear a hat because when my hair flops on the top of my head, it severely annoys me. Sure, it’s not good aerodynamics either, but that’s besides the point, the flopping is just not calming and looks horrid.

(Horrid being my choice of word because I think I am being quite an old fuddy duddy and completely unnecessary in my observation. Horrid feels like it matches the best.)

Anyway, if I’m looking at the good in the people with flopping hair as they run, at least they’re running. No one is completely evil yeah?

These aren’t very crazy ideas, it’s just very random thoughts I’ve been having about life as a whole.

First: I was wondering why my android battery was working so badly this week.  It seemed to have dropped extremely quickly and worst than anything else, I felt I under utilized the phone as a tool for writing. I’ve been watching YouTube in black and white on it,  and reading a lot but not writing. The horrors, I’ve added on a device I don’t need and the battery is dying! I thought.

But I realised it’s coming Friday in a few hours, and my last charge was on Sunday earlier this week. So it survived from Sunday evening until now (Thursday midnight Friday morning) and the battery is just above half.

So it is a pretty nifty device, and yes, I decided to write the wrong.

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Another silly idea was how much junk my wife will need to clear when I die, when I do die.  The trouble with this is never really know when you die.

So the minimalists will trim their item range while alive. That’s great, everyone just has to toss your journals and random uniform and voila, the earth has forgotten you. Alternatively (and seems to be my current direction) you amass a ton, and hope your legacy includes a hoard of books and nonsense over the years. Let our offspring decide.

Both ways, I think it is something I think about often, along with best ways to travel around the world. (I do think about my routes and I think took the game of it right).

I’ve been thinking about how I have approached zine making recently, and it’s really just using a ton of text. Taking Stephen King’s advice to heart, I want to take my writing seriously but it is fun to see my own shifting towards more words and ideas. I enjoy the observed alignments, and how the paths of creativity fall into place by some amazing force. I call it God, and the Artist Way concurs, but generalises the term to the Muse. Similar attribution, but one has a ton more religious implications.

I recounted my childhood understanding of killed creative drives to some young people today. At 10, I was awarded the top creative writing story in the school, or in the level, I forget. At 11, I was told I needed to learn how to write for the exams, and I needed extra classes. System killing creativity, in action, Exhibit A: Joel. Sure okay, it’s a pity party in some sense. But whenever I work on the Artist Way in its practice, I always remember this. No one really cares, but I do, because it’s my hurts and it’s my life.

Now’s my turn for revenge. So I force everyone who follows my work creatively to read endlessly. I have so much content for zines, just at my fingertips, and I unleash it all over the indie fairs and markets I take part in. Time for everyone to learn how to read a bit.

But they probably won’t. Because all we were taught to was how to score for an exam, and not actually to write.

Driving kinda sucks sometimes.

I like it for the most part, I love moving at speed, I love the moments where I catch that little gap and squeeze through traffic.

I also really enjoy the places I get to go to with my wife, and running errands is a lot easier when you can throw things into the car boot. Usually I’d be overladen carrying these things by hand. But with a car, it’s all good.

I hate the part where I have to stop suddenly because someone cuts me off. A lane change, a sudden overtake. Then I’m forced to stop. That bit sucks a lot.

So I had gotten myself a POCO phone to start writing more. The intention was truly meant for me to have a productivity beast on my hands, something I could write with anywhere on the go.

And now after the past three hours of messing around with it, I’ve come to the conclusion of the type of users that poco have targeted, and in that vein, the Xiaomi user group, and in that extended vein, the budget Android user.

To begin with, I’m using a C81 pro, and this is almost the lowest rung of cheap phones. Maybe it’s a step up from the lowest. It’s not a bad phone and I don’t have any issue with the technical abilities of the phone at all.

Actually the display is large, and it’s smooth, really sharp and has beautiful colors. Compares with my iPhone 13 mini or SE2020, it’s massive and an improvement in many ways.

The phone’s battery is nuts too, it’s supposed to last 31 hours from the full charge, and of course I’m going to try to make it last that long.

But as much as the hardware is a great thing, the software is truly my biggest pinpoint. It’s not whether the OS is familiar or not. It’s pretty standard and I can search for the functions I need to adjust, and sure I can learn a few new tricks. What gets to me are the ads.

There are ads appearing as I change my theme colors. There are pro level adjustments that seem basic, but comes at a premium unlock level. Why does this happen on my phone in a stock build? It feels incredulous and shouldn’t be part of a default experience.

Then there are the apps. The phone ships with games and social media. Do you want TikTok? Its in. Do you want Instagram? Also in. What about something mindless to play? Sure there’s mahjong and other tile games. Just say the word and the update continues.

So I think, I’m not the typical budget Android user. After all, I’ve just made the entire phone black and white, removed all the apps and games, and even removing Gemini too. The phone is silent, black and white, and all I have on my home screen are the writing apps I want to use.

I am just annoyed that it took me 3 hours to work out how to delete apps and have my own baseline apps in. I’m also annoyed about some of the time was spent navigating ads and paywalls. It was truly not a fun experience.

But maybe you want a cool ass phone that’s huge, that has great color, and all the social media apps are preloaded, then honestly, this C81 pro is a perfect phone for the price. I paid SGD135, and I’m complaining a lot but I honestly can’t complain. It’s a great phone, just not meant for me.

I’m reading Stephen King’s On Writing, and since this is my blog, I decided that I will indeed have some intention on my pages.

There’s always a lot of things I want to communicate. I have opinions and thoughts, and if you’ve met me in person, I’m quite an easy going person on the general front.

But one thing I stand for, and one thing I’ve always want to write and communicate is for humans to be a bit better for each other and everyone else.

It does not make sense for a select few to give ideas and lead, when the rest don’t want to follow. Likewise, just because someone puts their trust in you, doesn’t mean you should exploit their weaknesses. Leadership is always the first level of “doing better” I feel needs to be addressed.

But to carry my pages with real intention, I want to also look at it like a loaded gun. With a loaded gun, you always point towards the direction you want to shoot. If you’re not going to shoot, then you holster your weapon and take out the bullets so that it doesn’t harm anyone on accident.

When I write and communicate, I want my words to carry action. If I’m not going to communicate, I holster my weapon and take my bullets out. I don’t need to be shooting all the time but if I do shoot, I want it to hit. It needs to be on target. If I speak, I want my words to mean something to the person I am speaking to. If it’s you on the blog, then I hope it hits you straight to the heart.

And I think that’s what I want to look at. How do I write something straight to the heart, and what do I want you to take from me straight to the heart? I don’t want to waste bullets and I don’t want you to be hit by stray bullets, never intended to carry any points.

I don’t know how it’ll do it, but I take and accept the challenge not to take the page lightly. I will do my best to write in a way that brings my points across the best they can.

I was looking through some workout plans from Jocko Willink’s Discipline Equals Freedom, and I was reminded about doing the thing now.

It never fails to amaze me how much I lean towards this whole idea of getting the setting and the mood right. Or worse still, getting the right keyboard to get my typing, or the right shoes to get me running. It’s not about any of that, and even if it is, I’ve got at least one of everything in the categories I want to succeed in.

If it’s about writing, I have pens, I have pencils. I have papers, I have notebooks, I have computers, I have keyboards. Literally shortage of none, and I have the relative best types there are.

If it’s about running, I’ve got shoes, max cushion, daily trainers, lightweight race day types (although it’s probably lived out its best use case scenarios). In that same vein, if it’s about exercise, I’ve got the kettlebells, I’ve got a pull up bar, I’ve got the resistance bands.

If it’s about gaming, I’ve got all the retro games up to my noses. I don’t really chase after the biggest and latest, I just want a good game, and I’ve got a ton of good games that ought to be played.

If it’s reading, I’ve got so many books to read. Physical and digital, and maybe even audio.

If it’s about art, visual arts, I’ve got a literal ton of art supplies. Ink beyond my life time, I think.

It’s not meant to be a brag, I am trying to be upfront with mself about not waiting for the tool, but instead just doing the thing now. Because I can, and because I should. I’m calling myself out for watching too many “writers routine” videos, without writing. I’ve been looking and watching productivity, without being productive. I see different releases for new games, new books, new everything, but instead of using the best and greatest of what I have, I just look for more new.

I have different iterations of these thoughts about capitalism and marketing strategies, but today, I’m taking the blame on myself. I have let myself go in my disciplines, and I need to stop. I have to work, and make the work. I have to get out there and do something. It’s not right for me to sit and wait on the best time. Instead, I should be right here with it. making it happen.

So I decided to write today, as part of the process. Becoming a writer or something. We’ll see where this goes, but I gotta start by showing up first.

A disclaimer: I haven’t bought a new pair of shoes in the past month or two, although I had a pair in February or March, where Clarice got the Tom Sachs GPS Decolage shoe for my birthday (a super early present).

Why do shoes always attract me somehow? It’s protection for the feet, but why do the shapes, sizes, and colors matter to me? I’ve done sketches of shoes, paintings of shoes, took photos and kept different versions of dying shoes in my cupboards just for memory sake. I’ve read books about shoe legends and watched movies and documentaries about how important a pair of shoes were to someone.

And then I’ve owned them. I bought special releases, I’ve waited online and bartered for a pair. I’ve researched and picked shoes that are obscure and yet have a cult following of sorts. I don’t have any more space and I am also quite tired of keeping so many pairs of shoes.

But I still look for them. I spent half an hour on New Balance just, looking at the new range and figuring out what would be worth the cost of it. I don’t have any good answers or reasons to buy them. I just know I don’t have the space to keep any more.

Maybe it’s just how I feel when I walk because I do indeed love walking. Perhaps that’s a key reason why shoes do mean a lot to me, because I do want my feet to be well protected as they clomp around.

I should spend a bit more time developing the why… but I’m happy with all that I have for sure .

There is a smell of the evening in military camps, it’s the smell of cheap sports soap used by most of us in Singaporean Military National Service.

The sun is setting, and everyone’s tidying up their gear for the evening. Some started eating their dinners already but others went for the showers first. I’ll usually be walking around to check who’s going where and if there are specific things to follow up before the night starts. Sometimes, most times, there are night coordination sessions where we need to dive into deep details about how things were and things to improve for the next day.

While walking around, the storm drains fill with the smell of soap, from the showers going on. The smell of sweat from the afternoon goes away, pushed out by the cheap menthol type body soaps. It gets hot in camp, without aircon in the bunks, so most people use something with a cooling after effect.

Those who haven’t started on their showers might be washing things down. There’s a lot of cleaning going on basically, but the sunset pulls the dirt of the day away.

Sometimes I smell this around the older housing estates. Maybe the smell isn’t from the storm drains, even though I feel the hot shower water steaming through the trains a bit. But when I smell it, it brings me back to camp. I remember how it felt like being at such a common point with my friends. I remember being part of a whole, and yet I was the one walking around to observe something like this. But still, part of the group.

In the estate, I am part of the community too. I’m not distant from them, despite my hope to be unique and individual. Instead, I am part of the group, and I am there, in the housing estates.

I recall a short story from Michel Faber, where the homeless and missing stay together in a shelter, and the protagonist looks over the bunk beds and sees his reflection in the puddle of pee at the bottom of the floor. He waves at himself, but other hands stick out and wave in response.

We’re all in this together, in this mess of pee, or cheap body soap, in my experience.

I passed my driving test on Monday, and by the next day, I was hitting the highways, with my father in the passenger seat, and my wife in the back. It’s a quick rush to the finish, but I feel funny inside.

I know I passed, but there were portions I was so sure I lucked out on. There was a part where the pedestrians crossed illegally, and I allowed them to. There was a moment where the turning light flashed, and pressed the brakes hard, because I didn’t want to run the light. Then another time when the amber light came on midway, but I was going slow enough for myself to stop. After those moments, I definitely felt huge regrets, and ready to book another test session. But as we pulled up to the driving centre, the tester told me to take a breather, because I passed already. I was so hugely relieved. My favourite instructor just happened to be there as I was leaving and I gave him a hug. I was really excited and thankful in so many ways for him.

And now, my third day driving, I feel like I don’t deserve it. There were moments today where I felt I made bad calls on what how I drove and where I chose to do what. I know there’s no such thing as a perfect drive every day, but maybe that’s an idealistic thought I imagine would happen all the time after passing driving. But there honestly would be no way of that happening, because at the heart of it, it’s a human process, and everyone’s bound to make some mistakes.

I should really give myself a break some times, it’s literally only my second time on the highways, and my third day driving. I don’t understand why I am so hard on myself when there’s absolutely no need for it.

Ok today’s post became a lot more like a diary/journal reflection. It’s still me, just the part of me with huge critical pointing fingers, saying I’m not good enough. It’s a tough line, and I have to learn how to be chill with myself a lot more.

I visited Rembrandt’s House a couple of years back with Clarice during our time in Amsterdam. He was a crazy hoarder like me, just with more things, and during a time when it was expensive to own things. He had his studio spaces where his disciples would practice to paint exactly like how he did. He had places where he would mix his paints and draw. And of course, the rooms where his wife and him lived at, with their child.

I bought a bunch bookmarks based off his etchings, and one of them is a series of self portraits he did. Rembrandt was famous for painting himself into a scene, and sometimes that gives a viewer an alternative perspective. Where would you be in a gospel scene with Christ?

But I guess a bigger question I have started to consider is how much he drew to end up with himself as the subject to practice? If he already owned a ton of things, and he had people around him often enough, why couldn’t he just paint them or the things he owned? My take is he probably did already, just that he did it so many times, and the archivists who have consolidated his work probably valued his self portraiture more. There’s angles, theres’s poses, and he’d fare well as an influencer with his choice of hats and outfits.

I wish I had some determination at his level, to keep on drawing or making things. I write here, for now, but there are things I won’t produce online for one, and there are other projects not be seen by the public maybe ever. I don’t know if I’ll ever make it as “an artist” but I think it’s not the point to. The point is to express myself as a person into the world around me. What people do with the pieces of me after I’m gone is what matters to them. What matters to me is how I live my life today. I want to use as much of my life as possible in all the moments I have been given.

Just like Rembrandt painting everything and running out of things to paint.

Every day, I end up watching a video or two about how I should journal, what simple pen had inspired some artist or author to create more in their lifetime, or maybe some productivity method to boost my morale and motivation. But to be extremely honest, I really don’t need it.

Here are a list of things I use on a daily basis, or within my arsenal of tools that I think are the top of the class:

1. Mitsubishi Pencil – Hi Uni
2. Staedler 4B Pencils
3. Muji pens (smooth ink and regular ink)
4. Pentel Energel pens
5. Uni Jetstream pens
6. Woodpecker Blades for penknives and box cutters
7. Pilot Iroshizuku inks for my fountain pens
8. MD Notebooks for journaling
9. Tomoe River for another journal
10. Hobonichi 5 year diary for a daily journal
11. Hobonichi weeks for a junk journal
12. ASTAR W D802 Cutter handle for my cutting
13. The British National Gallery Pocket notebooks for pocket notebooks

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I’ve also made my own notebooks, so I’ve got that bunch to use up. I’m not mentioning fountain pens, but in some sense I’ve given up and I just use whatever I left out last. It’s been rotating with Lamy Safari, Pilot Metro, Jinhao, and Platinum Preppys.

I actually don’t carry much out with me. I just use the Jetstream 5 in 1 pen+pencil, and then maybe I throw in a clicky pen (Energel/Muji). I think there’s a Uniball in there somewhere that I’m forgetting, but I can’t see it on my table right now, so I am just imaging it doesn’t exist.

I also buy pens and pencils in bulk whenever it makes sense to. So I bought a box of the Mitsubishi Hi Uni pencil, and a box of the Pentel Energel pen (Black ink edition!)

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I don’t need more pens, I just need to write more, but I still really want more stationery for no particular need. (I don’t actually act on this want all the time)(I am saving up for a box of Blackwing pencils, but my call on this is to use up at least 3 more Mitsubishi pencils first before I get there)(OR to just finish the Blackwing I currently have)

I don’t actually have to run anymore. Not for the bus, not for an annual fitness test, not really for my daughter (although she is getting a lot faster). But I decided to run today, just because I felt trapped for some reason. The feeling of being bogged down by responsibilities and demands from the people around me and myself as well.

The family part is actually the easiest, or at least I’m getting more comfortable managing the responsibilities of being a dad.

Work, on the other hand, is getting bigger in many ways, and I want people to grow. It’s a huge expectation and desire for everyone to grow. I don’t know why I want people to grow, but it’s there. I want a person to be the best God wants them to be. Caveat is I’m not God, and I’m not them, so I can’t imagine what their best is, and I cannot also demand it out of them.

So I ran, as fast as I could for 2.4KM.

It’s drilled into me to run that distance because of my national service physical tests we had to do annually. I keep running that distance automatically, even though 2KM is a cleaner number. 1.6KM is one mile, which also looks much cleaner. But 2.4km will definitely move you out of one grid square, and in military terms, one grid square is the estimated distance you should put yourself away from an artillery shelling. Meaning, if there is a notice of artillery shelling in an area, you start running immediately in a straight line, and you should be safely out of the range within 10 minutes or so.

I’m not exactly in an artillery shelling currently, but I felt impending doom for a stretch over the weekend. It’s not very fun, so I ran tonight, just to get myself out of the square.

11 minutes 41 seconds. Rough.

I’ve been alive on this earth for some time, and I think the current state of modernity in 2026 makes it so hard to end the day properly.

It starts simple: I am not sure if I should take a calm approach and read to chill out for the day. Or maybe I should take and entertaining approach and play a game of sorts. Perhaps video games are too much and I could explore solitary table top board games. Or I could wake my wife up from her nap with the baby and ask her to play a two player board game instead. Maybe that’s too much interaction and I should veg out and watch some Netflix. But Netflix has too much low quality material, I should go for Apple TV. Hey hang on, Apple Music could give me some time to listen to something fun with my chi-fi earpieces. Then again, I could also read as I listen. But what music goes with the books I’m reading? Perhaps I should take a look online and find out some recommendations. But I have to clear my daily journal from the table before I begin, so maybe I should start there instead. And after I write, then I should do my daily drawing too. Also have my daily Duolingo streak to maintain. What about my daily bible reading? Definitely need to have that down too. Then I have to remember to get my teas and waters ready for the bedtime if I’m going to be writing and reading in bed. Oh wait. I forgot I needed to text someone about tomorrow’s thing. Ha! That Instagram reel was funny! Oh that wasn’t just one reel, and I’m at 1AM already. I should just go to bed.