This is a concept I learned recently on Tiktok, in order to achieve anything out of your comfort zone or change something about yourself, you first have to "climb cringe mountain". It's a simple concept, you have to do things that to you find to be cringey or uncomfortable. I've included the original video that I saw mentioning this:

So what am I doing different or new?

First, I think I wait too often to write an "interesting" blog post. I don't have many thoughts that are original or unique but I do have many things I'd like to post about but then before even typing a word, I think to myself "this is not interesting" or "this is kinda cringe" but I guess that's the difference between me and someone who posts relentlessly all the time.

The other thing is, on being a beginner. I preach this concept all the time, act like a beginner, think like a beginner in any situation and your curiosity will lead you to learn many new things. But I think this has been misplaced by me recently. I have cocooned into a fixed mindset. Not being around people who are doing a similar thing as me (programming) and also not being around motivated people has left me feeling lethargic.

Today, I went to a pilates class for the first time. With a strong push from Kristen, I was convinced to go try it. It looked scary, with the moving machines, and it looked really hard. I was struggling the whole time. But, I did survive it. I got out of it without throwing up. It did make me feel uncomfortable, and I was a beginner so I stopped judging myself a few minutes into the class (maybe because I couldn't use my energy to judge and instead redirected that to breathing and keeping up).

75 Day Challenge

Another thing I am starting today is a 75 day challenge to learn new concepts in programming and computer science. Over the last 3 months, my knowledge has stagnated and I haven't found a sufficiently interesting way to learn new things. I'm going to use my blog as a way to write down all the things I'm learning, they'll start with what I know about the concept and then move on to new things or different things I didn't know or don't use (e.g. why Rust over Python, or Functional over OOP).

This challenge fits into the cringey and beginner descriptors and I'm hoping to use my blog as a platform to showcase just how much uncomfortable stuff I can write about or "seemingly boring" stuff until I really get a hold of writing regularly.

Structure

The structure will be simple, I will spend 2-3 hours on learning and writing down the concept. If it takes longer than that, I'll continue doing it for the day but only for that day. Some concepts will be grazed over due to their depth but my hope is that I come out of this with more than a basic "heard of it" knowledge.

Everything from questions I have while learning to notes I take will be in a blog post and I will spend about 30 minutes to an hour summarizing and cleaning up the blog post.

This will give me a lot of new things to learn and it's just enough days until the end of the year (with a few skips like holidays).