Jun 12, 2024
irla one pager is about your life, who you are as a person and what your goals are, it’s a living document and an extension of yourself. knowing these 2 things and being true to them is what can make someone happy! after watching a ted talk from REDACTED about this and listening to them over Teams today, i wanted to try it out and make my first iteration including author notes (99% of the blog) and make it public!
in a question about fitting into an identity, REDACTED said, “Think of adjectives you want people to say about you. But really though, it’s what you want to say about yourself.” once i heard that, it reminded of a slightly similar line of Ryo’s in Bocchi the Rock, “Abandoning your uniqueness is equivalent to dying,” and it all made sense.
not so long ago, i remember forcing myself to stray away from anime, vtubers, videogames, my behaviors, and sayings in order to be “normal” (whatever that means anymore lmfao). i really thought in order to succeed, i needed to throw away everything that made me, me. everyone that i knew that was successful irl didn’t enjoy these things or had my qualities so i thought i had to do the same.
every piece of myself that i locked away made me feel emptier and emptier. hell, i was becoming more of a failure despite following “the rules” (that i made up). it wasn’t until i freed myself i started to feel alive and happy, finding the sweet spot. i started to catch up on anime that i’ve missed, went to my first anime convention, found a new vtuber to watch (deme), revisited my favorite games, sticked to being chronically online, and being cringe af irl by saying twitch emotes and niche online community sayings that not even my choomfies understand like “kappa penis deluxe.”
after all that, i guess i want people to describe me as that “silly weird awkward dude who’s fun to be around, a natural gaming prodigy who’s forced to play the game called capitalism, and a genuine sweet nice caring thoughtful angel.” it makes me happy to be and to think of myself that way, and i hope my ch/oomfies feel that way about me too.
this is a hard one because i myself don’t know wtf i want lol. what do i wanna build, what do i want to own, what do i wanna do in tech, where do i wanna live, and do i even want kids? REDACTED mentioned how there’s some things to consider when making goals, take time to stop and think and more importantly do they align with your values. but more importantly when asked about pivoting or sticking to goals, REDACTED said, “It’s all about how bad you want it against the goal being realistic. If you really want it, you wouldn’t care if it’s unrealistic… Only pivot to explore, not because it’s easier.”
i remember when i was young (Q3 and 4 of 2023) i was dead set focusing on ML. i started to self study, applied to research, the whole shebang. i wanted it, ML was cool, you can do data science and make anime girls. was it realistic? no, i was a 4th year who ignored the calling to ML in my 1st year (you couldn’t make anime girls at that time) and got rejected from a summer lab because it was too late for me as a 4th year which was valid. i took some time to think if i really wanted it. i mean if i did i’d be doing it still. did i pivot? yes, i took some time to literally explore libraries, figure out and do side projects, do hackathons, and get this current internship i have. but ngl, i’m sorry REDACTED, it was kinda easier to pivot lol. let the nerds research ML :P (i’m sorry, please make anime girls real)
below are my life goals, stretch goals, short goals, and fun goals (guess which are which lol) that i know are my wants, that are both realistic and unrealistic, align with my values, and are goals that I took time to stop and think about:
i would go on about how REDACTED says that one goal leads to another, goals make new goals, blah blah blah. but you can guess with backwards thinking, how some goals are pre-reqs for others and what new goals come from these current ones. but yeah this is version 1 of my very first one pager, hope you enjoyed.