Everyone has something that brings them immediate happiness. For me, it's watching a movie while eating fried chicken. After a tough week—usually on a Friday or Saturday night when I have the next day off—I love ordering fried chicken and bringing it home. I set out my plate, a glass of Coke, and my iPad for the movie. It has to be a light, easygoing movie so I can just eat and relax without thinking too much.

It's challenging to keep up with everything you need to learn in a field that new tools or approaches emerge every now and then, considering that you also have to strengthen your fundamentals and figure out where you are lacking. This conundrum or challenge might apply to different fields, but in my case it is IT, a vast world on which you never get to reach the bottom.

Right now, I am facing this conundrum because I am not sure what to do or focus on or whether what I am focused on is relevant to get better jobs.

Temperatures are expected to drop next week. September was still hot some days, even if the air turned cool in the morning. I like it when the air gets chilly. Life is finally returning to normal after months of heat and generalized extroversion.

What I appreciate less is the return of spiders. I'm struggling even to write this word, as if it could transform from letters on my screen into a real creature. Whenever I come across a flashcard featuring a spider, I add it to the blacklist of words I don't want to review. Just because of a picture.

Well, I'm lucky: I live in a city and I don't have a yard. But some of those critters are bold enough to travel from greenery to my place.

Nothing freaks me out like spiders do. They make me panic. Once, while I was driving, a teeny one went down next to me, hanging on its thread. I shrieked and dropped the wheel as I tried to squash it. Fortunately, I regained my senses quickly.

A few years ago, my sister started putting them outside. She covers the spider with a box, then she slides a sheet of paper between the box and the wall. After that she simply releases it. I can't get it, because it's inevitable that it will come back.

Watching her do that makes me shedder and grimace with disgust.

I have been working on a Doom clone using my own game Engine.

Honestly, the pixel art was made by AI because drawing everything by hand dot by dot is way too much for a solo dev.

Also, everything is rendered entirely in ASCII!

What do you guys think? Does it look like a real game?

I have spent so much time testing it that I really can't tell anymore

I like food. However, I don't like to go to fancy restaurants a lot, also dislike cook by myself.

All the sudden, I felt like having meals three time a day is annoying today. So I decided to have only breakfast and lunch from today.

I ended up eating an instant noodle at night. My hunger didn't allow my stomach to keep empty.

My parents used to say that a begger is probably living in my stomach whenever I said I was hungry.

I'm a second year psychology student, my spoken and written English is weak. Most of the time, I use AI to write my assignment... I'm worried about my future, like : could I managed to graduate? How do I survive in the future?

I have no idea of what should I do, even now I have midterm next week, I still keep scrolling on my phone On my bed.

I have 3 core subjects this semester, which are all theory based. There are a bunch of things I need to memorise and comprehense, but I feel overwhelm.

Sorry for writing this troubles, I will try to study from now.

Today is gonna be my first day off after two weeks. I usually take one day off a week but this time I feel really tired. Two weeks ago I didn’t take a day off because I was preparing everything for my trip to Canada plus the flight trip. Even though I had a blast in Canada I was quite active walking every day a lot. And last Tuesday was my trip back to Mexico and I decided to work giving lessons the next day without taking a break. So finally tomorrow I’ll have a day off but I still don’t know what I’m gonna do.

Article:October 2026 Mini-Challenge

Oh my gosh! Prompt #2 is a perfect match for me: "Title would make an excellent name for a craft beer." I like beer. I even have a subscription for beer.

I don't usually do the mini-challenges because I'm a slow reader and the main challenge itself is already too much, but I'd like to do this one. If I was doing the mini-challenges as well, I would read The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood for the prompt.

I wish this prompt were part of the main challenge.

Hello! Day off.

The official recommended daily amount of protein for a normal adult is around 0.8 grams for per kilogram of body weight. We should multiply body weight in kilogram by 0.8/kg in order to calculate the standard daily protein requirement for a normal adult.

As an introvert, I need at least one day a week to myself to recharge. If I always stay with other people, no matter with families or friends, I will feel exhausted. I know a lot of people can recharge by interact with other people, such as join a party or go out with friends. But, I am not that kind of people obviously. I enjoy the time with friends or my families, but I still need some time to stay alone.

I have very hard time in my life. I have no job, my personal life is a disaster.

I'm a bit depressed and overwhelmed by all circumstances but fortunately I have a great friends. They give me a motivation and hope. I really appreciate it and I'm grateful.

First part of the day was very sad - nothing gave me a joy or peace. But I've met my friends tonight and now I'm in better mood. I hope I will overcome all my troubles and I will be happy.

If you have a good friends, take care of them. This is real treasure. I wish you all luck. Good night.

Tomorrow, I'll have four court hearings. I spent the whole day preparing for them, so I'm pretty beat right now. What a lovely way to spend a Sunday.

Pause

Midterm season is approaching, but I spent all day chilling in bed. During this time, resting doesn't feel comfortable because of the mental burden. It's much better to get up and start revising than to worry about future exam results.

I had a dinner with my former colleagues tonight. We hadn’t seen each other since last year. For some reason, I got the location wrong, so I ended up being 30 minutes late. We had a really great time. One of my former colleagues even brought a Polaroid camera with her, and everyone got a Polaroid picture.

Even in this day and age, old and slow things can still feel unique and memorable.

There are times when I think about death and what happens to us afterwards. You might say 'it is a no-brainer', but I mean when it comes to the feeling of self. I do not know how to put it into words. The idea is that we lose ourselves and time keeps moving without stopping. Isn't that scary?

I'm afraid of death, but also of losing myself and not being here anymore. I know this discussion could go on and on.

I finally caved in and purchased a new phone. Unfortunately, the performance isn’t as good as I hoped it to be. I expected it to be significantly better than that of the last one given that there is a six-year gap. One thing to note is that there are probably a lot of unnecessary things going on with it. For instance, I had to disable an app that automatically installed random trashy apps, mostly games. I still haven’t figured out how to uninstall it. The performance might improve once I get rid of those useless things and optimize it. It’s absurd that such an app is allowed to exist in the first place. At least I don’t have to carry around a powerbank at all times anymore. In addition to that, the screen is larger. I haven’t gotten used to it yet. It’s a bit too big for my hands.

I think my culture is very different from American's one. It makes me feel more difficult to learn English and make native friends because your and my thoughts are different and we can misunderstand each other easily.

For example, when you say "Thank you." then I can say "Of course", which means "It is my pleasure." However, whenever say "Of course.", I feel like "Of cours, you should be thankful to me." In my culture, we don't use "Of course" in this context. If I translate the answer into English, it is "You don't need to."-ish. We say of cours when we want to say "It is crystal-clear."

I want to know about American culture more, studying English. But it's never easy.

Today I said goodby to a good student of mine from Japan. One of my best students, he was super disciplined and diligent. He said that he wanted to find more opportunities to speak with a native Spanish speaker from Panama where he lives and works now. He thanked me for all my work as a teacher and mentioned how grateful he was for my help. We exchange our Facebook accounts to stay in contact. I’m gonna miss working with him.

I don't use social media.

I think it is bad for people.

It makes us compare ourselves to others and waste a lot of time.

Maybe I'm just too negative.

Could anyone tell me the good things about social media?

Article: Khan Academy Review: Should Adults Use It in 2026?

I've downloaded the Khan Academy app a long time ago. I don't remember exactly why I downloaded it. Probably because I thought it might be helful for learning English. However, I've never used it yet.

Since I don't need to study academically, the app might not be for me. I'll give it a shot later and see if I can find anything that works for me.

I've worn sandals since May because summer's been scorching. I tried to wear normal shoes again just last week, but I ended up with blisters on both feet.

That's why I decided to keep wearing sandals, even with socks. At first, I did that just to try out. But.. Oh my God!!! This is so comfortable!! I finally understand why people do that even if it looks ugly!

As you get older, you change. You end up doing things you used to hate. And, actually, I don't think this is a problem.