I am not a sane person. I think I am utterly insane. I either am silent, completely indifferent towards life and meek or I am a driven, loud, extroverted and ambitious guy. Sometimes I repeatedly punch the wall through a pillow so I don’t wake up my neighbours. Sometimes I meditate with the sound of a waterfall in my EarPods. Sometimes I mix creatine, Monster Energy, peanut butter and banana slices into my protein shaker just to drink a sip and feel my heart stop.

In order to feel something, I gotta do this kind of stuff. Right now, as I am writing, I imagine myself having the voice of James Gandolfini who played Tony Soprano. I am binge-watching the show for the second time in a row and I secretly wish I was more like Tony during my adolescence. He always took what he wanted and he never took a no for an answer.

This brings me back in time. You know, in order to motivate myself I think about really bad stuff that happened to me. When I think about bas stuff, I think about bad people I met. They are three and they all have a thing in common. Their names start with an “A”.

That’s how I refer to them:

A1

A2

A3

Every single time I need to get something done (studying, lifting, working) and I feel like I don’t want to do that, I simply recall their names, what they have done to me, and how I could have prevented everything bad from happening to me simply being a little stronger, smarter and less naïve. This is how my journal looks like:

I need to study hard. I don’t want to. A3. I was 18 years old. As I am procrastinating, A3 is going to have an advantage and (always A3) is going to beat me again.

That’s how I motivate myself. Of course, I don’t start studying all of a sudden. My blood starts to boil and thinking is impossible for five-six minutes. When it happens, I do this: 50 push-ups, 40 pullups, I count to ten controlling my breathing. Then everything is fine and I am ready to study as hard as ever. I think about my advantage that makes me superior to A3 and, for an hour, the world is as beautiful as it gets. I feel superior. Thinking about an individual who made me miserable six years ago and imagining a comparison between him and (A3) makes me feel superior. That’s why I say I am utterly insane, prisoner of a mistake I made a long time ago.

I will avenge myself.

I will save myself.

The words from The Northman comes to my mind. I am fighting a hopeless fight that doesn’t need to be fought. But I need to feel in charge. I need to have some control over what happened. I can read all the stoicism books I want and train as hard as I can. Outrunning the past is an impossible task.

A1: 14 years old

A2: 17 years old

A3: 18 years old

I look in the mirror and I touch my abs. My six-packs is not as visible as last week. Gotta remove some extra weight and cut. That’s the only way to live.